Well, it's not just "those who would be our masters" (presuming you mean the megacorps/megarich, the usual meaning of such), it's the folks out in the cheap seats too... There's a lot of people who wholeheartedly support the ACA, yet are totally clueless about the effects it's implementation is having and the price being paid by real people.. (And are dismissive of any accounts of the same.)
Waffle Iron is a different sort - he's not clueless about the effects, he *welcomes* them because they fit his political/philosophical bias.
The problem is, that 'Everybody' includes people like me who had their own plans - not just those with employer sponsored plans. I'm losing my plan because I simply can't afford the rate hike. (Actually, my research to date indicates that I may no longer be able to afford health care at all - and I don't qualify for any kind of a subsidy.) The problems that grandparent alluded to are under reported and very fucking real, and jackass replies like yours don't help.
It's looking more and more that if my wife's employer does keep their plan, I'll have to go on her plan - worse yet, while I won't save all that much money... the benefits and services will be sharply curtailed compared to what I currently receive.
The wondrous thing about the Apollo program is that while big government, that deservedly maligned institution, provided the resources, it was not run as a bureaucratic, big government program.
A couple of years back I came across a document from the late 1960's outlining the processes for determining if an item could be, and then should be, carried in the crew cabin... the flow chart giving a high level overview of the process alone covered a three page foldout. The rest of the document (a high level overview remember) ran almost a hundred pages. ( I suspect that if I had all the references listed at the end printed out, as it would have been back in the day, it would have filled a good sized shelf.) IIRC, there were over a dozen major Offices, Boards, and contractors involved in setting and certifying the requirements, overseeing the procurement, documenting the item, testing the item, ensuring it met the specs, ensuring it was on all the relevant drawings, ensuring it was in the appropriate training syllabuses, etc... etc...
I've studied many NASA internal documents of the era, and they all point to what any competent space historian knows well - the management and bureaucracy of the Apollo program was mind numbingly complicated. In fact, pretty much all of the paperwork, management, etc... that people blame for the failure of the Shuttle originates in the Apollo era.
With the end of the Cold War, the importance of SAC (and it's successor STRATCOM) has declined markedly - and it's gotten even worse with the various battles/wars/whatever in the Middle East producing actual combat veterans who've started getting a leg up on the promotion ladder. Also the second best and brightest* aren't being recruited into the USAF strategic forces anymore. The results are pretty much what you'd expect. Everyone expected the 2007 muck up with the nuclear tipped ALCM's to be a wake up call, but that doesn't seem to have happened.
*Being a former submariner, I'm biased, but IMO the best and brightest are onboard the boomers.
You'd think about the obvious reasons for nuclear disarmament, but nobody ever spares a thought for the poor sods who have to sit there watching these doomsday devices: if they ever get used it's the end of the world, if they're ever attacked it will be with overwhelming force, and they are expected to be running their AAA-game 24/7/365, no holidays, no vacations.
Oh, I think of the 'poor sods' in the missile silos... to laugh uproariously at them and how 'hard' they work. They're on duty in the silo for 24 hours once a week or so, and when they're not on duty they work 9-5 and get weekends off. When something in the system breaks, they phone home and someone else comes out to fix it.
I sat my missile fire control console six on, twelve off, mumble feet under the North Atlantic for sixty to eighty days a pop. If the system went down, it was on us to fix it. No nine to five. No weekends. No meals at home. No sunshine. And back then, the Walkman was brand new and the absolute height of personal electronics. (Not that personal electronics make up much for what you're missing.) I truly had to have my AAA game, because there were dozens of ways to die or be badly injured surrounding me 24/7 for days on end.
When it comes to a hard life in the strategic weapons world, the chumps out there with the prairie dogs aren't close to having the hardest. That (dubious) 'honor' belongs to my brothers and sisters boring holes out there in the deep blue.
Are you saying that a gang of "market makers" aka high priests aka railroad barons aka oligarchs, should run the economy because only they know the esoteric and unseen illusions in the system which they themselves engineered?
Translation: "I have no idea what I'm talking about, so I'll just throw around some big words to make myself look intelligent". (Protip: It has rather the opposite effect.)
Bruce Schnier may be the front-line spokesperson for the security community, but that should be completely separate from his body of work in cryptography. At the bottom line, he's doing mathematics, and mathematical proofs can be reproduced and confirmed -- or debated and disproven -- by anyone else in any country with sufficient background to understand them.
True, but irrelevant. His reputation on the 'net doesn't depends on his skill and experience as a cryptographer - but on his position as a columnist and pundit saying things that they (the netizens) agree with. His reputation (and ability) as a scientist have nothing to do with his ability and trustworthiness as a pundit. (Or at least they shouldn't to any thoughtful and intelligent person.)
I think this might be the first goverment case of a large organization trying to execute a publicly facing software project and failing.
Between this and other large scale government software rollouts... I think the problem is less one of the government (as the oft repeated bromides here keep insisting) than it is that there simply no way to roll out a system this big in one go and not have it buggy as hell. (Or at least if there is one, we haven't found it yet.)
Charcoal is actually a pretty crappy fertilizer - it's very stable (I.E. breaks down very slowly even when finely divided), and doesn't release much in the way of materials that plants require. (Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium make up the bulk of modern fertilizers.) It's not even very good at altering the pH of the soil.
(Yes, I know ash is used as a fertilizer and to alter soil pH. Charcoal isn't ash.)
Without seeing the letter, and knowing more about the context... this article amounts to nothing but flamebait. It's entirely possible that Professor Waite, being quite inexperienced, has violated one or more of the existing regulations and has mistaken that for 'repression'. Digging around the relevant websites fails to discover any evidence that's he actually done any work or research on said regulations, only that he's an advocate for their use in journalism.
I didn't know those were the rules. Are they well-known and well-understood? I've been out in fields in the middle of nowhere with two different people who were flying drones well above 400ft - nobody made any mention of a 400ft limit. I'm just curious.
Well known enough that they're brought up in every/. discussion on the topic. Well known enough that a brief Google check of various R/C aircraft clubs and associations shows that they list them on their websites. A check of a couple of manufacturer's websites show the rules listed in the manuals that accompany their models.
People breaking the rules and failing to mention that they're doing so is not, IMO, sufficient evidence that they are unaware of the rules.
I've got some friends who work for the Fed and they loved the shutdown because they a) didn't have to go to work, b) weren't using up vacation days and c) were guaranteed backpay for the days the gov't was shutdown.
Then, frankly, your friends are either lucky (in that they had no bills to pay with the paycheck they didn't get), or they're stupid.
My friends who work for the fed (most of whom were barely recovered from the furloughs over the summer wiping out their savings) hated the shutdown. Many had to work anyhow, and are uncertain when they'll get paid for the shutdown. (The last time this happened, it took five years for some to get paid.) In the meantime, working or not, mortgages and car payments came due, groceries still had to be put on the table, utility bills still came due... etc... etc... The couple next door, between the both of them and the shutdown and the furloughs will have lost nine weeks of pay (presuming, is as likely, they don't get paid for the shutdown anytime soon) - almost a ten percent pay cut.
And pretty much all the federal employees I know are talking about cutting their budget to the bone to save money for a potential showdown/slowdown/shutdown in January. Between that, and furloughs over the summer, and the lost business over the last two weeks... the secondary effects on my county (where the Fed is the largest employer by far) are seriously approaching disastrous. The business my wife works at has (as of today, and she's the CFO and knows to the penny) seen a 15% drop over the course of 2013 - on top of not having completely recovered from the recession.
I'm noticing a lot of "waah, little baby can't handle a little teasing" posts. This is/. -- who wasn't mercilessly picked on in junior high/high school??
This is/., who collectively have the average empathy of an Ebola virus particle.
Slashdot is packed with mentally unstable conspiracy theorists who insist that the US is worse than Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, and North Korea all rolled into one. Compared to that level of white hot hatred, most Americans will seem pretty passive over the NSA thing.
That and privacy activists have been screaming bloody murder over every little thing so loudly and for so long now... that everyone who isn't a borderline mental case/conspiracy theorist classifies them right beside Chicken Little and The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
Apple may have invented this particular technique, but funneling money through off-shore companies goes back beyond when Steve Jobs was still in diapers.
We have known the basic principles for a long time so how hard can it be, right? You just mash some atoms together until they fuse.
Unfortunately, the real world is rather more complex than elementary school level description - and the devil is in the details. A scientist friend of mine who studies high energy plasmas (but over on the astrophysics side of the house) says that "the history of fusion research is the history of finding ever more maddening and subtle ways that plasma can misbehave".
"Technology" has been good enough to dress up in space suit costumes for decades. It's only recently that amateur and university groups have arrived at the mistaken conclusion that doing so represents anything useful.
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Some possible far off future is irrelevant to the facts of today.. Nice try at directing attention away from your original claim though.
Well, it's not just "those who would be our masters" (presuming you mean the megacorps/megarich, the usual meaning of such), it's the folks out in the cheap seats too... There's a lot of people who wholeheartedly support the ACA, yet are totally clueless about the effects it's implementation is having and the price being paid by real people.. (And are dismissive of any accounts of the same.)
Waffle Iron is a different sort - he's not clueless about the effects, he *welcomes* them because they fit his political/philosophical bias.
You haven't a clue what you're talking about, both of your 'specific points' being utter bullshit.
The problem is, that 'Everybody' includes people like me who had their own plans - not just those with employer sponsored plans. I'm losing my plan because I simply can't afford the rate hike. (Actually, my research to date indicates that I may no longer be able to afford health care at all - and I don't qualify for any kind of a subsidy.) The problems that grandparent alluded to are under reported and very fucking real, and jackass replies like yours don't help.
It's looking more and more that if my wife's employer does keep their plan, I'll have to go on her plan - worse yet, while I won't save all that much money... the benefits and services will be sharply curtailed compared to what I currently receive.
From TFA:
A couple of years back I came across a document from the late 1960's outlining the processes for determining if an item could be, and then should be, carried in the crew cabin... the flow chart giving a high level overview of the process alone covered a three page foldout. The rest of the document (a high level overview remember) ran almost a hundred pages. ( I suspect that if I had all the references listed at the end printed out, as it would have been back in the day, it would have filled a good sized shelf.) IIRC, there were over a dozen major Offices, Boards, and contractors involved in setting and certifying the requirements, overseeing the procurement, documenting the item, testing the item, ensuring it met the specs, ensuring it was on all the relevant drawings, ensuring it was in the appropriate training syllabuses, etc... etc...
I've studied many NASA internal documents of the era, and they all point to what any competent space historian knows well - the management and bureaucracy of the Apollo program was mind numbingly complicated. In fact, pretty much all of the paperwork, management, etc... that people blame for the failure of the Shuttle originates in the Apollo era.
With the end of the Cold War, the importance of SAC (and it's successor STRATCOM) has declined markedly - and it's gotten even worse with the various battles/wars/whatever in the Middle East producing actual combat veterans who've started getting a leg up on the promotion ladder. Also the second best and brightest* aren't being recruited into the USAF strategic forces anymore. The results are pretty much what you'd expect. Everyone expected the 2007 muck up with the nuclear tipped ALCM's to be a wake up call, but that doesn't seem to have happened.
*Being a former submariner, I'm biased, but IMO the best and brightest are onboard the boomers.
Oh, I think of the 'poor sods' in the missile silos... to laugh uproariously at them and how 'hard' they work. They're on duty in the silo for 24 hours once a week or so, and when they're not on duty they work 9-5 and get weekends off. When something in the system breaks, they phone home and someone else comes out to fix it.
I sat my missile fire control console six on, twelve off, mumble feet under the North Atlantic for sixty to eighty days a pop. If the system went down, it was on us to fix it. No nine to five. No weekends. No meals at home. No sunshine. And back then, the Walkman was brand new and the absolute height of personal electronics. (Not that personal electronics make up much for what you're missing.) I truly had to have my AAA game, because there were dozens of ways to die or be badly injured surrounding me 24/7 for days on end.
When it comes to a hard life in the strategic weapons world, the chumps out there with the prairie dogs aren't close to having the hardest. That (dubious) 'honor' belongs to my brothers and sisters boring holes out there in the deep blue.
x-FTB2/SS, USS Henry L. Stimson 655B 1983-87.
And people wonder why the entertainment industry keeps producing sequels, remakes, rehashes, and re-imaginings...
Assuming the edits aren't auto-reverted by the owner of the page.
(Yeah, yeah, I know the theory - there are no page owners on Wikipedia. I also know the reality.)
Translation: "I have no idea what I'm talking about, so I'll just throw around some big words to make myself look intelligent". (Protip: It has rather the opposite effect.)
It's all black magic to the Luddites, and thus must be banned.
True, but irrelevant. His reputation on the 'net doesn't depends on his skill and experience as a cryptographer - but on his position as a columnist and pundit saying things that they (the netizens) agree with. His reputation (and ability) as a scientist have nothing to do with his ability and trustworthiness as a pundit. (Or at least they shouldn't to any thoughtful and intelligent person.)
Between this and other large scale government software rollouts... I think the problem is less one of the government (as the oft repeated bromides here keep insisting) than it is that there simply no way to roll out a system this big in one go and not have it buggy as hell. (Or at least if there is one, we haven't found it yet.)
Charcoal is actually a pretty crappy fertilizer - it's very stable (I.E. breaks down very slowly even when finely divided), and doesn't release much in the way of materials that plants require. (Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium make up the bulk of modern fertilizers.) It's not even very good at altering the pH of the soil.
(Yes, I know ash is used as a fertilizer and to alter soil pH. Charcoal isn't ash.)
Without seeing the letter, and knowing more about the context... this article amounts to nothing but flamebait. It's entirely possible that Professor Waite, being quite inexperienced, has violated one or more of the existing regulations and has mistaken that for 'repression'. Digging around the relevant websites fails to discover any evidence that's he actually done any work or research on said regulations, only that he's an advocate for their use in journalism.
Well known enough that they're brought up in every /. discussion on the topic. Well known enough that a brief Google check of various R/C aircraft clubs and associations shows that they list them on their websites. A check of a couple of manufacturer's websites show the rules listed in the manuals that accompany their models.
People breaking the rules and failing to mention that they're doing so is not, IMO, sufficient evidence that they are unaware of the rules.
From TFS:
Um, who exactly is this news to? Historians and sociologists have known this for decades.
Then, frankly, your friends are either lucky (in that they had no bills to pay with the paycheck they didn't get), or they're stupid.
My friends who work for the fed (most of whom were barely recovered from the furloughs over the summer wiping out their savings) hated the shutdown. Many had to work anyhow, and are uncertain when they'll get paid for the shutdown. (The last time this happened, it took five years for some to get paid.) In the meantime, working or not, mortgages and car payments came due, groceries still had to be put on the table, utility bills still came due... etc... etc... The couple next door, between the both of them and the shutdown and the furloughs will have lost nine weeks of pay (presuming, is as likely, they don't get paid for the shutdown anytime soon) - almost a ten percent pay cut.
And pretty much all the federal employees I know are talking about cutting their budget to the bone to save money for a potential showdown/slowdown/shutdown in January. Between that, and furloughs over the summer, and the lost business over the last two weeks... the secondary effects on my county (where the Fed is the largest employer by far) are seriously approaching disastrous. The business my wife works at has (as of today, and she's the CFO and knows to the penny) seen a 15% drop over the course of 2013 - on top of not having completely recovered from the recession.
Indeed - plus placebos generally don't work all that well when the person *knows* they're taking a placebo.
This is /., who collectively have the average empathy of an Ebola virus particle.
Thank you for so eloquently proving my point.
That and privacy activists have been screaming bloody murder over every little thing so loudly and for so long now... that everyone who isn't a borderline mental case/conspiracy theorist classifies them right beside Chicken Little and The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
Apple may have invented this particular technique, but funneling money through off-shore companies goes back beyond when Steve Jobs was still in diapers.
Unfortunately, the real world is rather more complex than elementary school level description - and the devil is in the details. A scientist friend of mine who studies high energy plasmas (but over on the astrophysics side of the house) says that "the history of fusion research is the history of finding ever more maddening and subtle ways that plasma can misbehave".
"Technology" has been good enough to dress up in space suit costumes for decades. It's only recently that amateur and university groups have arrived at the mistaken conclusion that doing so represents anything useful.