Because maybe he is interested in politics that affect nerds, not mindless leftism or rightism. Even somone as apparently as partisan as you can admit this had no bearing on any "nerd" issues.
It was supposed to be self deprecating humor, not beat up Bush and the Press night.
See the Bush act - mocking himself (and it was pretty funny). All the others pretty much did the same, except Colbert with his attack act.
Thats why the room went silent and Colbert basically bombed his appearance. And yes he bombed - that's what you call it when people stop laughing at a comedian. Only partisans from one side would see it even remotely funny - most see it for what it was, ripping a guy when you're not supposed to. (Most posters here excepted - since Slashdot does lean left, to them the ends justifies the means).
All that aside, this is the real issue:
So how is this article News for Nerds, other than a good troll by Zonk? I want to read "looney lefty" rants I'll go to DU, Indymedia, Daily Koz and the like, and if I'm in the mood for "raging rightwing" rants, Little Green Footballs is the place. Slashdot should stay out of that - stick to political issues that have "nerd impact". This definitely didn't.
Whats next, a post about how much Al Franked hates Bush, or Bill O'Reilly blowing his own horn - or (shudder) Rush Limbaugh's jail deal?
(Ugh! No LIMBAUGH on Slashdot - Slashdot must remain a Limbaugh Free Zone)
Nerds are politically of all stripes, and this had no bearing on freedom issues or net issues or regulation, etc. It was not NEWS FOR NERDS - not even close. It was just a bad attempt at comedy by a second rate comedian in the wrong venue for that sort of thing.
Easy. Do not resort to demagogouery when talking about the War on Terror. Dont be Sheehan nor Limbaugh. Do not give in to the MoveOn loonies any more than you would the John Bircher loonies.
I served, and have many friends over there, and the Democratic party has frozen us out. Don't slam us on the awr - we are winning in spte of the best efforst of COngressman Murhta and others to keep us from doing so. Go to Baghdad, and get out in the countryside - you'll see the truth for yourself. So dont go along the "Bush is Evil" psychosis that seems to have gripped my old Democratic party, from Howard Dean (who is a raving loonie some days), all the way down to its Congressmen and Senators who seem willing to score political points on either side of the aisle on the lives of our troops and the safety of the nation. Recognize that the Republicans have done soem things right, as well as the widely enumerate things they have done wrong. The economy, for instnace, survived a war and a terrible blow at New Orleans and is humming along, thanks to the tax cuts.
Also, be honest and stand up to the media conglomerates who pose a far greater threat to our freedoms as the shackle us with restrictive laws on what can be donw with our most precious things: our labor and our ideas.
Fix the immigration mess. We must control entry to our borders as a matter of secruity. Build the fence and patrol it. But also leat anyone in that can show they are like my ancestors: willign to work and want to be Americans, even if theyare "guests" initially, including the peopel that are already here.
Dont denigrate people of faith. Disagreement is fine, especially on abortion, but to belittle people for their faith is what the Democratic party has come to stand for in the press. We dont want a Taliban here, but we don't want North Korea either. Some of the faith based people have a lot to offer if they are not threatened first. Bring the Democratic party back into being ht "Big Tent" party. Make room for Mormons and Catholics and other "Family values" types of religious voters. Right now, we feel pushed out by the party rhetoric.
Honest disagreement is a good place to start; dropping the stridency when you present facts make for a people person. Ask Al Gore, great ideas in many areas, terrible "holier/smarter than thou" presentation.
And promise that you will serve 2 terms, or at most 2 then a severe self-questioning about serving a 3rd and final term. That more than any other shows you are a citizen legislator, in that order.
Interesting. I've met a couple of other sentaors, as well as several sentorial candidates. With one exception (Ben "Nighthorse" Campbell of Colorado, who is now retired), regardless of party affiliation or political bent, they *ALL* struck me as the type that "put themselves first on their priority list", i.e. they were all about themselves and really didnt seem to care all that much about people -- except where it could get them elected or re-elected; there they "fake" concern for "the people" fairly well.
Its a shame Mr Ashdown, although a techie-type, seemingly fits the same mold. I guess it has to do with the money & ambition that it takes to campaign at that level (even in Utah), and the (defective) driven personality types that such "jobs" attract. For the end-state of such ambitions, look no further than Robert Bryd and Trent Lott (or Ted Kennedy who has become a walking self-caricature).
"The Slashdot story is about the NSA ignoring the law"
Enough with the lying (or did I just get trolled?).
What law? Specificlly what federal statute was violated by their putting a persistant cookie for the NSA website? Cite US Code, section etc.
You cannot, do you know why? Because no such *law* exists. Because it was an executive order in the OMB part of the Whitehouse. I.e. a bureaucratic rule, not a law.
And aside from that, it likely was a mistake in their setup after and upgrade, not a deliberate decision. A result of ignorance or carelessness on the part of the tech staff at NSA's website (the possibility of which should be more alarming to people than the cookie!)
You do well to remember Hanlon's Razor:
Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.
Esepcially when dealing with the government or any other large bureacratic organization.
You are free to ignore the facts and make up ones as you wish (looking at your links, you apparently do). But your tinfoil hat has apparently slid down and obscured your vision on this - you might want to adjust it.
(My previous didnt really suggest a good solution - so here you go)
Try introducing your boss to "quality measures" as detailed in any number of Software Engineering texts. have him read any number of the good books on software production. Let him realize that rework costs money - and that repeated rework (i.e. fixing bugs that were fixed before) can become exponentially more expensive in terms of the time (i.e. money) that you have to spend on such activities. Furthermore, the lack of source code control prevents you from recovering quickly from coding errors - your or his.
In business terms, perhps this would sell it: there is no *accountability* for errors or defects, no way to list and prioritize activity you need to take with defects, no ability to see trending or patterns, no ability to learn from your errors and prevent future ones, etc. No way to manage the process wth any sort of efficiency or effectiveness.
Basically making software without bug tracking and version control is like running the cash side of the business without any accounting system. And its simply unprofessional.
If this doesnt do the trick, then you need to get out. Sooner or later he will make a change to the codebase that will break things in the fuiture, and you will have no way to unwind it short of a full rewrite. And without bug tracking and version control, it will all be blamed on you, and you will get stuck with the blame, the loss of trust, the downtime for repairs and the overtime charges needed.
Your boss is an idiot if he thinks more than one person can work on code without a revision control system and something to track defects. This is assuming yours is something more than a toy system. At a minimum, you need version control for the ability to "undo" large chage sets in case you go down a "bad path" and you need to reverse out a lot of code based on a faulty design decision or a deeply embedded bug.
Your answer seems to lie more in the political realm than the technical. Good luck.
Preetty simple to see that you're wrong - again go bakc and READ the law, and check the refernced posts on Powerlineblog, and a few libertariani law blogs as a counterweight. The constitution is the cental document in allowing current (and all past) Presidents to do exactly what was outlined: warantless interceptsof US Personss when given the set of circumstances outlined.
1802 (a)(1)(A)(i) states explicitly "as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3)", *not 1801 (b), so CLEARLY it does cover the possibility of including some United States Persons in warnatless searches.
Anyway, this still doesn't address the court's opinion that it is a constitutional authority of the president, which would exeed legal authority by definition.
Between FISA's gaps and loopholes. the circumstances of the actions, the exceptions and limitations on FISA granted by past court decisions, and the modifications of the law from the Patriot Act and the congressional Authorization to Use Military Force, the President (ANY president) is well within his powers (powers in a Constitutional sense) handling exceptional circumstances as outline previously in my argument.
If we dont like it, we need to amend the COnstitution or pass laws that are far more specific and will pass a court test.
And that was my original point: slashdotters tend to foam at the mouth rather than think. I was pointing out that this is one of those cases where far too may were foaming in fear without really understanding what was truly going on.
I love the "overrated" mods - its the cowards way of modding down based on politics without ever getting pegged by the meta-mods. At least have the guts to use a real negative modifier and see if the metamods dont crank you for it.
I think I've had it with the gutless slashbots (unlike those who replied and countered what I put out there). I'll bother to post more when you've grown up. I'm going back to mod&metamod and read only mode again.
ANd if you want to stay off federal surveillance lists, dont try to cross onto federal military intallsitons illegally. Bascially you were conspiring ot break the law, and warrants wre probably easy enough to get. You're not who this article says the NSA was aiming at.
ANd FYI, you're idiots for abusing the Catholic Church to make political statements - evey bit as bad as Falwell and his bunch.
Actually people are treating US Person as if its US Citizen - and its clearly not. A "US Person" can be a legitimate target for routine intercepts, especially when engaged in activities hostile to the US involving people overseas. US Person is a temporal designation, and subject to change based on activity and location.
US Citizen is not.
Yet people here on Slashdot seem to think US Person == US Citizen.
THAT is what I was cautioning against. Hardly irrelevant difference.
As for "Histrionics" - they're all yours. The Bullshit here is your misunderstanding (or is it a deliberate distortion, a lie perhaps) of the ease with which FISA warrants are granted? Its almost impossible to get warrnts sufficient in scope and speed to follow across several media forms without going outside the bounds of the FIS _ and you will nto it was not written with the speed of modern commuications in mind. People swithcing from Sat phones to land lines to cells, to "trhow away" mobiles, to VoiP, to Blackberry email, to IM... FISA courts are unable to cycle rapidly enough and allow the cross connections needed to follow across thsoe boundaries.
The bullshit, my friend, is yours and based on your ignorance of the limitations of FISA courts and the pace with which modern intercept operations must be conducted, especially with multiple terminus international communications. Remember, the 4th amendment is not absolute with regards to warrants (the "reasonable" clause give a lot of lattitude to searches where immediacy is important), and the President has fairly large amount of lattitude under Article II of the Constitution.
Or would you rather the enemies operate unfettered and mostly unobserved, like they did prior to 9/11?
It comes down to who you trust. Apparently you trust Al Qaeda more that your fellow citizens who work at the intellgience agencies. I find my trust to go the other way, given I know some of the latter, and have seen the former's handiwork up-close in NY City and Mosul.
I'm not an apologist as much as a realist - unlike you who seems to have forgottent here are bad people out there who wish to destroy the US and are even now engaged in the attempts to do so. A "slip" in one direction results in lawsuits, a slip in the other results in mass casualty. You cannot treat both risk sets as if they are identical. Wake up. Its not Sep 10, 2001 world anymore.
Actually, you want to dispute Powerline, go do so. I have yet to see their arguments on this refuted - adress their reasoning and citations, and stop with the ad homienm. Its tiresome and old for the left and the right to both use such stupidity as a core of thier arguments. The reason I mention Powerline is happen to be using a well respected LIBERTARIAN constitutional scholar to back themselves up on this - which is how I heard about it from my side things.
As for the "yet" angle, its bogus. You know it too. I know if from my time at Ft Meade. Improper intercept of US Persons is a very serious matter, which is why I am worried - but not excessively so. The Bush or whatever administration has some lines they cannto cross without severe repercussions from within. The situation cited is not one of those.
As I said originally, its a matter of balance: our rights versus the government's ability to preotect the nation against people who woudl destroy it.
Remember NOT to do what most here are doing: flying off the handle with politically misstated misinformation and wild speculations. Get the facts straight first.
Do not conflate "US Person" with "US Citizen". Do not become completely confused as to what was intercepted. NO calls that were within the US between US Persons were intercepted without a warrant. Get that fact straight first - what is referred to in the articles online is the world-wide intercept program of the NSA, and that it included some calls that had a terminus in the US as well as in a target of interest area overseas. They are not monitoring your call to the local mosque, nor your aunt Mabel in Canada (unless she happens to work for Al Qaeda).
The relevant parts of the FISA:
1) the acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any wire or radio communication sent by or intended to be received by a particular, known United States person who is in the United States, if the contents are acquired by intentionally targeting that United States person, under circumstances in which a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a warrant would be required for law enforcement purposes;
(2) the acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any wire communication to or from a person in the United States, without the consent of any party thereto, if such acquisition occurs in the United States, but does not include the acquisition of those communications of computer trespassers that would be permissible under section 2511 (2)(i) of title 18;
(3) the intentional acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any radio communication, under circumstances in which a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a warrant would be required for law enforcement purposes, and if both the sender and all intended recipients are located within the United States; or
(4) the installation or use of an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device in the United States for monitoring to acquire information, other than from a wire or radio communication, under circumstances in which a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a warrant would be required for law enforcement purposes.
Lots of legal analysis of htis going on, but this is one of the more cogent pieces I have seen. Read it and you will realize that although it sounds bad in terms of civil rights, its probably legal, and certainly proper if you take the view that preventing antoehr 9/11 is paramount importance.
If the NSA surveillance program tracks all international communications (or all international communications to al Qaeda hotspots such as Afghanistan), it does not target specific individuals as required by 1801(f)(1). If the communications are intercepted outside the U.S., the NSA program falls outside the definitions in 1801(f)(2) and 1801(f)(4). If the program excludes intentional capture of purely domestic communications, it falls outside the ambit of 1801(f)(3).
Bottom line: a massive surveillance system that intercepts millions or billions of international calls and e-mails may not constitute electronic survellance as defined by FISA, provided that the interception occurs outside the United States and neither specific individuals nor purely domestic calls are targeted.
Bush's supporters and opponents can argue about whether that's good or bad, but the law is what it is.
This progrram is likely a direct outgrowth of the events of 9/11 that were arranged between overseas enemies of the US and their domestic agents (who were illegally in the US a the time of the attacks). Intercepting those communications is certainly legal, and reasonable (in terms of the 4th amendment prohibitions of warantless searches).
Remember - get the facts first, not the rumors and
You may have a point here - remember that Level 3's main exec, Jim Crowe, was an exec under Ebbers at Worldcom. Plus I've heard from a one or two people where I work who worked there and they pretty much back up what you said: Level 3 treats the tech people liek pieces of facility, not people down there in Broomfield (I worked tech up in Boulder a while back at Adaptec, and saw them build those buildings up on the hill).
Putting on my investor's cap, and taking a quick look at financials, its obvious that Level 3's burn-rate on cash, and billions in debt is not looking good for them if they cannot start generating both higher margins and more revenues. Neither one individually will save them at this point. The debt service is eating what EBITDA revenue they have coming in faster than they can produce it. And with companies like Cogent undercutting them Level 3 is dying; it seems the only question now is how much interconnectivity they will destroy in fits of pique like this.
I think you may also be right on another point, after considering it and runnnign the numbers: if Level 3 were to reorganize in bankruptcy court, dump the current shareholders, turn the debt holders into stock holders to ditch the debt, then they would probably be very profitable at even lower pricing levels. After all, that is what a lot of their competition has done. If they do that, Level 3 will cut the throats of every company out there, and make a bundle doing it, free-market style. Pretty interesting scenario.
But first they have to drop the stockholders, and from your post, it sounds like cronyism is a big factor, so its only going to happen when there has been far too much damage to Level 3 as a company. Thats a shame, because looking at their web site, they have some good ideas, but the wrong time and place for them.
Thanks for the post AC (wow an AC that actually said something useful!)
You're everything we've come to expect from years of government training.
This kind of thing is not surprising... Not the part about the TSA violating the law, but the part about them screwing up data, and not knowing when the test will end.
Have any of you who are flinging around "evil conspiracy" crap ever worked on large government software projects?
Those things go on forever, rescoping, changes, rewrok, bugs, idiot specifications that have to be met even though they dont make sense... the list goes on and on. Its usually because of some law or another that mandate the software have a given function in it (even if it makes no sense), and the management is far from sterling - and the bureacracy that sits astride it moves at a glacial pace, making it nearly impossible to get design changes approved in any kind of timely fashion - I'm talking months not weeks, for even minor changes.
Thats been my experience nearly every time when working as a government employee. And this was at a federal defence agency that actually is known for getting things done fairly well and relatively quickly. (and this also explains why I am no longer a government employee - you can only take so much before your head asplodes).
Remember when they formed that TSA, it was carved from people who were tossed out of other agencies (remember, government agencies fight like mad to keep the best from leaving) - usually that means those are people the other agencies wanted to get rid of -- making the TSA a potential dumping ground for incompetents, malcontents, and desk-sitter-do-nothings-deadwood.
So don't attribute to malice what is far, far more likely to be incompetence. Especially at a new agency.
Let me try selling THIS to my boss, with the Cisco guys whispering sweet nothings in his ear about PiX Firewalls and all this wonderful "solution in a box".
They are ALL transposition errors, not lack of spelling skill.
I make them all the time because I am dyslexic. My eyes see the text one way, but my brain lies to me and says the text is correct. So even proof reading doesn't work unless I use a spell checker. They most frequently fall at the end of the word, and with vowel-consonant pairs, especially the L E or I E or C H combinations. Also I have problems with 2 and 3 letter words: "fo" for "of", "rof" for "for", etc.
You should see my source code - I'm probably the only coder to have to run a spell check on it (using a special dicitonary with all the keywords in it, and a lot of library function names). Or else make sure I have -strict and other crutches turned on in Perl (or use Lint for my c/c++ sutff).
I'm now a software architect, thank God I dont code much anymore.
And before you ask, yes this was previewed. I hope I got all the errors.
Funny thing is this was unanimous. Not even 1 dissent. I wonder how much limitaiton this "intent" standard they imposed will have on P2P? Its apparently that some people used the infringing uses to "promote" the filesharing software that cause it to be kicked back to the lower court.
At least on the previous mess-ups this session of the Supreme Court, you could count on the "conservative" justices to disagree. The Medical Marijuana case they upheld states rights, and the Eminent Domain case they upheld individual rights.
This is so sad. It has me WANTING more "Strict Constitutionalist" judges on the court (like the ones GW Bush has in mind).
As I mentioned in my submission a while ago (when the ruling broke on CNBC) that apparently got there right after this one:
This yanks the Betamx case from underneath Grokster, and forces a trail in the 9th circuit. Bascially, it gives the MPAA and RIAA a big biag hammer, and the only thign stopping is is the amount of money Grokster can spend at trial. This may bankrupt them, cause the cause te be decided by money, instead of a jury. And even then, an ignorant jury can issue some pretty bad verdicts.
Teh worst thing? Betamax no longer protects P2P - the Supremes have screwed the Betamax ruling over. Under thier ruling, the whole internet can be shut down and ISP's sued for infringement becuase they provide something that might be used for infringement.
What the hell is wrong with the courts? Its akin to convicting a woman of prostitution becasue she is "equipped" to commit the crime.
First the States rights are trampled in the Med Marijuana case, then the individual rights are trampled in the "Takings" case, now online rights are trashed in the Grokster case. The Supreme court needs to be reigned in. Or they are looking at triggereing a second American revolution.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do things fail? Well the real miracle is why do they work at all:
Space is a pretty brutal enironment. Hard vacuum, only microgravity, extremes of cold and heat, etc.
Because maybe he is interested in politics that affect nerds, not mindless leftism or rightism. Even somone as apparently as partisan as you can admit this had no bearing on any "nerd" issues.
It was supposed to be self deprecating humor, not beat up Bush and the Press night.
See the Bush act - mocking himself (and it was pretty funny). All the others pretty much did the same, except Colbert with his attack act.
Thats why the room went silent and Colbert basically bombed his appearance. And yes he bombed - that's what you call it when people stop laughing at a comedian. Only partisans from one side would see it even remotely funny - most see it for what it was, ripping a guy when you're not supposed to. (Most posters here excepted - since Slashdot does lean left, to them the ends justifies the means).
All that aside, this is the real issue:
So how is this article News for Nerds, other than a good troll by Zonk? I want to read "looney lefty" rants I'll go to DU, Indymedia, Daily Koz and the like, and if I'm in the mood for "raging rightwing" rants, Little Green Footballs is the place. Slashdot should stay out of that - stick to political issues that have "nerd impact". This definitely didn't.
Whats next, a post about how much Al Franked hates Bush, or Bill O'Reilly blowing his own horn - or (shudder) Rush Limbaugh's jail deal?
(Ugh! No LIMBAUGH on Slashdot - Slashdot must remain a Limbaugh Free Zone)
Nerds are politically of all stripes, and this had no bearing on freedom issues or net issues or regulation, etc. It was not NEWS FOR NERDS - not even close. It was just a bad attempt at comedy by a second rate comedian in the wrong venue for that sort of thing.
Zonk should be ashamed at trolling like that.
Easy. Do not resort to demagogouery when talking about the War on Terror. Dont be Sheehan nor Limbaugh. Do not give in to the MoveOn loonies any more than you would the John Bircher loonies.
I served, and have many friends over there, and the Democratic party has frozen us out. Don't slam us on the awr - we are winning in spte of the best efforst of COngressman Murhta and others to keep us from doing so. Go to Baghdad, and get out in the countryside - you'll see the truth for yourself. So dont go along the "Bush is Evil" psychosis that seems to have gripped my old Democratic party, from Howard Dean (who is a raving loonie some days), all the way down to its Congressmen and Senators who seem willing to score political points on either side of the aisle on the lives of our troops and the safety of the nation. Recognize that the Republicans have done soem things right, as well as the widely enumerate things they have done wrong. The economy, for instnace, survived a war and a terrible blow at New Orleans and is humming along, thanks to the tax cuts.
Also, be honest and stand up to the media conglomerates who pose a far greater threat to our freedoms as the shackle us with restrictive laws on what can be donw with our most precious things: our labor and our ideas.
Fix the immigration mess. We must control entry to our borders as a matter of secruity. Build the fence and patrol it. But also leat anyone in that can show they are like my ancestors: willign to work and want to be Americans, even if theyare "guests" initially, including the peopel that are already here.
Dont denigrate people of faith. Disagreement is fine, especially on abortion, but to belittle people for their faith is what the Democratic party has come to stand for in the press. We dont want a Taliban here, but we don't want North Korea either. Some of the faith based people have a lot to offer if they are not threatened first. Bring the Democratic party back into being ht "Big Tent" party. Make room for Mormons and Catholics and other "Family values" types of religious voters. Right now, we feel pushed out by the party rhetoric.
Honest disagreement is a good place to start; dropping the stridency when you present facts make for a people person. Ask Al Gore, great ideas in many areas, terrible "holier/smarter than thou" presentation.
And promise that you will serve 2 terms, or at most 2 then a severe self-questioning about serving a 3rd and final term. That more than any other shows you are a citizen legislator, in that order.
Interesting. I've met a couple of other sentaors, as well as several sentorial candidates. With one exception (Ben "Nighthorse" Campbell of Colorado, who is now retired), regardless of party affiliation or political bent, they *ALL* struck me as the type that "put themselves first on their priority list", i.e. they were all about themselves and really didnt seem to care all that much about people -- except where it could get them elected or re-elected; there they "fake" concern for "the people" fairly well.
Its a shame Mr Ashdown, although a techie-type, seemingly fits the same mold. I guess it has to do with the money & ambition that it takes to campaign at that level (even in Utah), and the (defective) driven personality types that such "jobs" attract. For the end-state of such ambitions, look no further than Robert Bryd and Trent Lott (or Ted Kennedy who has become a walking self-caricature).
"The Slashdot story is about the NSA ignoring the law"
Enough with the lying (or did I just get trolled?).
What law? Specificlly what federal statute was violated by their putting a persistant cookie for the NSA website? Cite US Code, section etc.
You cannot, do you know why? Because no such *law* exists. Because it was an executive order in the OMB part of the Whitehouse. I.e. a bureaucratic rule, not a law.
And aside from that, it likely was a mistake in their setup after and upgrade, not a deliberate decision. A result of ignorance or carelessness on the part of the tech staff at NSA's website (the possibility of which should be more alarming to people than the cookie!)
You do well to remember Hanlon's Razor:
Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.
Esepcially when dealing with the government or any other large bureacratic organization.
You are free to ignore the facts and make up ones as you wish (looking at your links, you apparently do). But your tinfoil hat has apparently slid down and obscured your vision on this - you might want to adjust it.
(My previous didnt really suggest a good solution - so here you go)
Try introducing your boss to "quality measures" as detailed in any number of Software Engineering texts. have him read any number of the good books on software production. Let him realize that rework costs money - and that repeated rework (i.e. fixing bugs that were fixed before) can become exponentially more expensive in terms of the time (i.e. money) that you have to spend on such activities. Furthermore, the lack of source code control prevents you from recovering quickly from coding errors - your or his.
In business terms, perhps this would sell it: there is no *accountability* for errors or defects, no way to list and prioritize activity you need to take with defects, no ability to see trending or patterns, no ability to learn from your errors and prevent future ones, etc. No way to manage the process wth any sort of efficiency or effectiveness.
Basically making software without bug tracking and version control is like running the cash side of the business without any accounting system. And its simply unprofessional.
If this doesnt do the trick, then you need to get out. Sooner or later he will make a change to the codebase that will break things in the fuiture, and you will have no way to unwind it short of a full rewrite. And without bug tracking and version control, it will all be blamed on you, and you will get stuck with the blame, the loss of trust, the downtime for repairs and the overtime charges needed.
Your boss is an idiot if he thinks more than one person can work on code without a revision control system and something to track defects. This is assuming yours is something more than a toy system. At a minimum, you need version control for the ability to "undo" large chage sets in case you go down a "bad path" and you need to reverse out a lot of code based on a faulty design decision or a deeply embedded bug.
Your answer seems to lie more in the political realm than the technical. Good luck.
Preetty simple to see that you're wrong - again go bakc and READ the law, and check the refernced posts on Powerlineblog, and a few libertariani law blogs as a counterweight. The constitution is the cental document in allowing current (and all past) Presidents to do exactly what was outlined: warantless interceptsof US Personss when given the set of circumstances outlined.
1802 (a)(1)(A)(i) states explicitly "as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3)", *not 1801 (b), so CLEARLY it does cover the possibility of including some United States Persons in warnatless searches.
Anyway, this still doesn't address the court's opinion that it is a constitutional authority of the president, which would exeed legal authority by definition.
Between FISA's gaps and loopholes. the circumstances of the actions, the exceptions and limitations on FISA granted by past court decisions, and the modifications of the law from the Patriot Act and the congressional Authorization to Use Military Force, the President (ANY president) is well within his powers (powers in a Constitutional sense) handling exceptional circumstances as outline previously in my argument.
If we dont like it, we need to amend the COnstitution or pass laws that are far more specific and will pass a court test.
And that was my original point: slashdotters tend to foam at the mouth rather than think. I was pointing out that this is one of those cases where far too may were foaming in fear without really understanding what was truly going on.
I love the "overrated" mods - its the cowards way of modding down based on politics without ever getting pegged by the meta-mods. At least have the guts to use a real negative modifier and see if the metamods dont crank you for it.
I think I've had it with the gutless slashbots (unlike those who replied and countered what I put out there). I'll bother to post more when you've grown up. I'm going back to mod&metamod and read only mode again.
Not NSA. That was FBI.
No even closely related to the story at hand.
ANd if you want to stay off federal surveillance lists, dont try to cross onto federal military intallsitons illegally. Bascially you were conspiring ot break the law, and warrants wre probably easy enough to get. You're not who this article says the NSA was aiming at.
ANd FYI, you're idiots for abusing the Catholic Church to make political statements - evey bit as bad as Falwell and his bunch.
Actually people are treating US Person as if its US Citizen - and its clearly not. A "US Person" can be a legitimate target for routine intercepts, especially when engaged in activities hostile to the US involving people overseas. US Person is a temporal designation, and subject to change based on activity and location.
US Citizen is not.
Yet people here on Slashdot seem to think US Person == US Citizen.
THAT is what I was cautioning against. Hardly irrelevant difference.
As for "Histrionics" - they're all yours. The Bullshit here is your misunderstanding (or is it a deliberate distortion, a lie perhaps) of the ease with which FISA warrants are granted? Its almost impossible to get warrnts sufficient in scope and speed to follow across several media forms without going outside the bounds of the FIS _ and you will nto it was not written with the speed of modern commuications in mind. People swithcing from Sat phones to land lines to cells, to "trhow away" mobiles, to VoiP, to Blackberry email, to IM... FISA courts are unable to cycle rapidly enough and allow the cross connections needed to follow across thsoe boundaries.
The bullshit, my friend, is yours and based on your ignorance of the limitations of FISA courts and the pace with which modern intercept operations must be conducted, especially with multiple terminus international communications. Remember, the 4th amendment is not absolute with regards to warrants (the "reasonable" clause give a lot of lattitude to searches where immediacy is important), and the President has fairly large amount of lattitude under Article II of the Constitution.
Or would you rather the enemies operate unfettered and mostly unobserved, like they did prior to 9/11?
It comes down to who you trust. Apparently you trust Al Qaeda more that your fellow citizens who work at the intellgience agencies. I find my trust to go the other way, given I know some of the latter, and have seen the former's handiwork up-close in NY City and Mosul.
I'm not an apologist as much as a realist - unlike you who seems to have forgottent here are bad people out there who wish to destroy the US and are even now engaged in the attempts to do so. A "slip" in one direction results in lawsuits, a slip in the other results in mass casualty. You cannot treat both risk sets as if they are identical. Wake up. Its not Sep 10, 2001 world anymore.
Actually, you want to dispute Powerline, go do so. I have yet to see their arguments on this refuted - adress their reasoning and citations, and stop with the ad homienm. Its tiresome and old for the left and the right to both use such stupidity as a core of thier arguments. The reason I mention Powerline is happen to be using a well respected LIBERTARIAN constitutional scholar to back themselves up on this - which is how I heard about it from my side things.
As for the "yet" angle, its bogus. You know it too. I know if from my time at Ft Meade. Improper intercept of US Persons is a very serious matter, which is why I am worried - but not excessively so. The Bush or whatever administration has some lines they cannto cross without severe repercussions from within. The situation cited is not one of those.
As I said originally, its a matter of balance: our rights versus the government's ability to preotect the nation against people who woudl destroy it.
Do not conflate "US Person" with "US Citizen". Do not become completely confused as to what was intercepted. NO calls that were within the US between US Persons were intercepted without a warrant. Get that fact straight first - what is referred to in the articles online is the world-wide intercept program of the NSA, and that it included some calls that had a terminus in the US as well as in a target of interest area overseas. They are not monitoring your call to the local mosque, nor your aunt Mabel in Canada (unless she happens to work for Al Qaeda).
The relevant parts of the FISA:
Lots of legal analysis of htis going on, but this is one of the more cogent pieces I have seen. Read it and you will realize that although it sounds bad in terms of civil rights, its probably legal, and certainly proper if you take the view that preventing antoehr 9/11 is paramount importance.
If the NSA surveillance program tracks all international communications (or all international communications to al Qaeda hotspots such as Afghanistan), it does not target specific individuals as required by 1801(f)(1). If the communications are intercepted outside the U.S., the NSA program falls outside the definitions in 1801(f)(2) and 1801(f)(4). If the program excludes intentional capture of purely domestic communications, it falls outside the ambit of 1801(f)(3).
Bottom line: a massive surveillance system that intercepts millions or billions of international calls and e-mails may not constitute electronic survellance as defined by FISA, provided that the interception occurs outside the United States and neither specific individuals nor purely domestic calls are targeted.
Bush's supporters and opponents can argue about whether that's good or bad, but the law is what it is. This progrram is likely a direct outgrowth of the events of 9/11 that were arranged between overseas enemies of the US and their domestic agents (who were illegally in the US a the time of the attacks). Intercepting those communications is certainly legal, and reasonable (in terms of the 4th amendment prohibitions of warantless searches).
Remember - get the facts first, not the rumors and
Watch out when they start moving on their own looking for skynet...
You may have a point here - remember that Level 3's main exec, Jim Crowe, was an exec under Ebbers at Worldcom. Plus I've heard from a one or two people where I work who worked there and they pretty much back up what you said: Level 3 treats the tech people liek pieces of facility, not people down there in Broomfield (I worked tech up in Boulder a while back at Adaptec, and saw them build those buildings up on the hill).
Putting on my investor's cap, and taking a quick look at financials, its obvious that Level 3's burn-rate on cash, and billions in debt is not looking good for them if they cannot start generating both higher margins and more revenues. Neither one individually will save them at this point. The debt service is eating what EBITDA revenue they have coming in faster than they can produce it. And with companies like Cogent undercutting them Level 3 is dying; it seems the only question now is how much interconnectivity they will destroy in fits of pique like this.
I think you may also be right on another point, after considering it and runnnign the numbers: if Level 3 were to reorganize in bankruptcy court, dump the current shareholders, turn the debt holders into stock holders to ditch the debt, then they would probably be very profitable at even lower pricing levels. After all, that is what a lot of their competition has done. If they do that, Level 3 will cut the throats of every company out there, and make a bundle doing it, free-market style. Pretty interesting scenario.
But first they have to drop the stockholders, and from your post, it sounds like cronyism is a big factor, so its only going to happen when there has been far too much damage to Level 3 as a company. Thats a shame, because looking at their web site, they have some good ideas, but the wrong time and place for them.
Thanks for the post AC (wow an AC that actually said something useful!)
(This was from the site above -but I remember doing this on 1.2, with an original 1000).
What I liked best?
Debugging. Coolest system error name...
Software Failure. Press left mouse button to continue.
Guru Meditation #0100000C0.000FE800
Sigh.. had they marketed it right, we'd not be talking about MS Windows at all. A machine and OS far ahead of its time.
This kind of thing is not surprising... Not the part about the TSA violating the law, but the part about them screwing up data, and not knowing when the test will end.
Have any of you who are flinging around "evil conspiracy" crap ever worked on large government software projects?
Those things go on forever, rescoping, changes, rewrok, bugs, idiot specifications that have to be met even though they dont make sense... the list goes on and on. Its usually because of some law or another that mandate the software have a given function in it (even if it makes no sense), and the management is far from sterling - and the bureacracy that sits astride it moves at a glacial pace, making it nearly impossible to get design changes approved in any kind of timely fashion - I'm talking months not weeks, for even minor changes.
Thats been my experience nearly every time when working as a government employee. And this was at a federal defence agency that actually is known for getting things done fairly well and relatively quickly. (and this also explains why I am no longer a government employee - you can only take so much before your head asplodes).
Remember when they formed that TSA, it was carved from people who were tossed out of other agencies (remember, government agencies fight like mad to keep the best from leaving) - usually that means those are people the other agencies wanted to get rid of -- making the TSA a potential dumping ground for incompetents, malcontents, and desk-sitter-do-nothings-deadwood.
So don't attribute to malice what is far, far more likely to be incompetence. Especially at a new agency.
Let me try selling THIS to my boss, with the Cisco guys whispering sweet nothings in his ear about PiX Firewalls and all this wonderful "solution in a box".
Or is this another Flavor of the Month event?
I put the second one thru the spell check in Open Office.
And yes, I consistently do spell one as oen, as well as the others. Its that I simply do not catch them all.
You want perfection? Sorry, you're in the wrong world. Last guy that claimed to be perfect, we nailed him to a tree 2000 years ago.
They are ALL transposition errors, not lack of spelling skill.
I make them all the time because I am dyslexic. My eyes see the text one way, but my brain lies to me and says the text is correct. So even proof reading doesn't work unless I use a spell checker. They most frequently fall at the end of the word, and with vowel-consonant pairs, especially the L E or I E or C H combinations. Also I have problems with 2 and 3 letter words: "fo" for "of", "rof" for "for", etc.
You should see my source code - I'm probably the only coder to have to run a spell check on it (using a special dicitonary with all the keywords in it, and a lot of library function names). Or else make sure I have -strict and other crutches turned on in Perl (or use Lint for my c/c++ sutff).
I'm now a software architect, thank God I dont code much anymore.
And before you ask, yes this was previewed. I hope I got all the errors.
Funny thing is this was unanimous. Not even 1 dissent. I wonder how much limitaiton this "intent" standard they imposed will have on P2P? Its apparently that some people used the infringing uses to "promote" the filesharing software that cause it to be kicked back to the lower court.
At least on the previous mess-ups this session of the Supreme Court, you could count on the "conservative" justices to disagree. The Medical Marijuana case they upheld states rights, and the Eminent Domain case they upheld individual rights.
This is so sad. It has me WANTING more "Strict Constitutionalist" judges on the court (like the ones GW Bush has in mind).
As I mentioned in my submission a while ago (when the ruling broke on CNBC) that apparently got there right after this one:
This yanks the Betamx case from underneath Grokster, and forces a trail in the 9th circuit. Bascially, it gives the MPAA and RIAA a big biag hammer, and the only thign stopping is is the amount of money Grokster can spend at trial. This may bankrupt them, cause the cause te be decided by money, instead of a jury. And even then, an ignorant jury can issue some pretty bad verdicts.
Teh worst thing? Betamax no longer protects P2P - the Supremes have screwed the Betamax ruling over. Under thier ruling, the whole internet can be shut down and ISP's sued for infringement becuase they provide something that might be used for infringement.
What the hell is wrong with the courts? Its akin to convicting a woman of prostitution becasue she is "equipped" to commit the crime.
First the States rights are trampled in the Med Marijuana case, then the individual rights are trampled in the "Takings" case, now online rights are trashed in the Grokster case. The Supreme court needs to be reigned in. Or they are looking at triggereing a second American revolution.
Johnny, get your gun.
Perhaps the fabled North Korean Super Hackers at work?
Although why woudl they want anything to do with the UK? Isnt it the USA thats their bete noir?