Dude -- the unibomber is in jail and you will be too if you *really* believe that statement enough to put your trigger finger where your mouth is. I believe in overcoming stupidity with the light of reason, which is why Linux, OGG, and OSS in general will win in the end.
Save your ammo for the things you intend to serve for dinner...
Until such a day that OGG is SUBSTANTIALLY better quality at a SUBSTANTIALLY lower bitrate/file size, mp3 will be king. Have you -- or anyone else reading -- actually computed the number of tracks of difference that OGG versus MP3 makes in evaluating a portable music player? OGG is very nice, but MP3 plays EVERYWHERE which is why it's *the* digital file of reference. When OGG is supported by 99.999% of digital audio devices then it (and its supporters) will be able to rightfully complain of exclusion. Until then, let's focus on the substance of what's being discussed in the article rather than bickering over what are eventually irrelevant details.
I too am curious what the Next Big Thing(tm) in digital audio formats will be, but how much smaller/better quality is any new/evolved format going to be -- and with storage getting so much larger and cheaper, will it even matter?
For audio, I think the eventual winner will be the format not with the best quality per se, but the best lock-down ability (DRM) to get the major commercial people behind it. In terms of pure audio, I think OGG might be the best quality format for now, but has nobody built an *optional* framework for allowing content creators to protect their work? Is it any wonder M$ is ready to eat everyone's lunch in this regard with WMA/V? (On that point, is there not some OSS encryption/rights management project that could be joined to OGG and/or FLAC to enhance the commercial viability of high quality open audio formats?)
Video, on the other hand, is so different from audio I don't think it has a place in this discussion, but to your point of having it play everywhere, I have wondered why there isn't some open technology platform for packaged video (VCD, DVD, whatever is next and then after that). How hard would it be to define a menuing system on something flash-like, that the video files must be of format X (or any number of acceptable formats), and the acceptable DRM schemes will be "___", and then sit back watch the Chinese and Koreans compete on who can build it cheaper? Just my $0.02 on that slightly OT point...
It's interesting that this question was posed at this time because I just went through this process with my own music collection recently. I ripped everything to FLAC and then did lots of testing and evaluation as to what file format would be best for my "portable" files. OGG is nice; AAC is Apple's choice (and therefore has a certain sex appeal to it); Sony are being their eccentric selves by going the ATRAC-3 route, and WindowsMedia is, well, WindowsMedia.
The bottom line is this: is there any digital music device that *cannot* play MP3? Will there ever be a format as pervasive as MP3? Until I have reasonable certainty that I can take audio in "format X" and have it play on every device under the sun, I will stick with MP3 for lossy audio -- because it plays on every device under the sun.
Someone already mentioned that there is a design for putting a second CPU in the same "wind tunnel" as the 1-cpu design, but is there any reason there cannot be a BTX-SMP that simply puts multiple processors side-by-side -- like the Mac G5 design -- and adds a few inches in length to board to accomodate the second "wind tunnel?"
Any/. reader could figure out how to get their computer to play any streaming format ever made, but that doesn't do anything for folks not as "enlightened" / "have more of a life" than us. While OGG is certainly a very nice format, if the basic premise of the streaming is to provide a service of interest to mainly non-technical folks -- like those *primarily* into 80's music -- then you might have to consider the possibility of not using the *coolest* format and opt instead for the most *available* format.
I was in the navy for almost five years, and overseas at the time of the 1996 presidential elections. It usually took five to seven (often longer) days for mail to get back to my family at home and the same time to get to me -- if my ship was in port when the mail arrived.
The article cited said that Broward county officials were overnighting the ballots to folks outside of the county. The way the military mail system works you've got regional post offices (APO/FPO) through which all the military mail flows. Getting the ballots to them *today* does nothing to expedite them the rest of the way to the service members, and certainly does nothing for the return trip.
The point is, because there is such a delay in getting mail to/from military members, there is absolutely no way that resending absentee ballots now will allow them to be returned by the deadline (which is Tuesday in most jurisdictions). When you figure that the military tends to vote heavily republican, sending out the ballots late is good enough for a "soft kill" of a net gain of thousands of republican votes.
While this should be a national outrage -- denying the vote to the very men and women who continue to guarantee our rights, frequently with their own blood -- I expect this story will get its cursory day or two of coverage before getting buried under other stories and nobody will ever be tried for this, much less see the inside of a jail cell.
All the new hard drive mp3 player are called iPod competitors because Apple's iPod owns about 92% of that particular market. Ergo, they are the de facto incumbent against which all new entries will be compared and against which all new players must compete in order to make any sales.
(For my part, I am still trying to decide between the iRiver H140 or the 40GB iPod for my Christmas gift to me...)
No, they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning, but if they change the debate then they've won. More importantly, if we were to hear any coverage about the third parties we would hear a message that MANY of us care a great deal about which neither of the "major" parties will dare discuss: immigration. Have you heard one word from Kerry or Bush about stopping the flood of ILLEGAL aliens across the southern border? Have you anything about rounding up all the ILLEGAL aliens currently here and throwing them out of the country? Laws don't mean a hell of a lot when neither the elected executives nor the do-nothing legislators completely ignore such a massively important problem like ILLEGAL immigration, one with huge negative economic and national security implications!
Perot might not have won in 1992, but he DID make Tweedle-dumb and Tweedle-dee talk about NAFTA... the same could happen now if the third parties were allowed to raise the issue of ILLEGAL immigrants, and that would be a win for democracy!
I know that the Greens, the Libertarians, the Natural Law Party, the Constitution Party and others would like to have their voices individually heard and to be covered more in the news, what's the chance that they could collectively make "breaking up the Republican-Democrat duopoly" the #1 goal in their platforms? If they were *all* in agreement on this point I think there would be more notice given to all "third party" candidates.
Or under the Patriot Act, whether you confess or not you go to jail for an undetermined period of time, during which charges may or may not be filed against you...
Preprogrammed based on what we *think* are the actual conditions there... now the landing will prove whether or not the readings and predictions were right. Considering there is not going to be any way to adjust for surprises on the way down I think that would qualify for at least mildly ticky...
That's a perfectly valid reason to run! If all the/.'ers joined up get a candidate whose platform is centered on open source software and technology at all levels of government as a means of saving money, while that candidate won't win she might convince the two big parties to pay more attention to open source issues, which is a win in it's own right. It's all about free speech and free exchange of ideas. I would think a bunch of linux nerds would understand that concept!
I totally agree that two options are not enough. Furthermore, why, when several of the "third party options" are on the ballots in all 50 states, or at least enough to theoretically carry the election (for example, if everyone decides to vote Libertarian in November then we'll be calling a guy named Badnarik the President), why are they not allowed to be in the "official" presidential debates? When Ross Perot got into the debates in 1992 he succeeded in getting the other two parties to focus on trade issues (NAFTA) more than foreign policy (Iraq). I don't think there will ever be a President from the Green, Libertarian, or Reform parties, but they should have the opportunity to have their voices heard in the debates!
Okay, I realize that the credit agencies have to use *something* to uniquely identify people for credit check purposes, but is it necessary to use an SSN? I work in the health care industry where SSN is *usually* used to identify folks. Kaiser Permanente has already moved to using "health record ID" numbers; Blue Cross (the parent company of New Directions Behavioral Health -- my employer) is moving to erradicate the use of SSN's as primary identification of health records starting this fall.
Why can't the credit agencies follow suit and use something other than an SSN to uniquely identify us also?
Caller ID for e-mail would verify that each e-mail message originates from the Internet domain it claims to come from.
Given that email headers indicate the IP address of the originating email server, and the 'from address' indicated the alleged originating domain, isn't this already possible by means of a simple DNS lookup?
Or is that CallerID really is under the hood and MS is trying to 'license' it to folks?
(Amd with all the money MS has, can't they hire tech writers who know not to end a sentence with a preposition???)
What is intuitive to you may not be to someone else, including someone who is quite savvy on another platform but unfamiliar with the general way of doing things on Linux.
There are plenty of things (browsing directories, mounting/unmounting media, configuring devices) that I understand how to do. What I don't know is where config file or control panel is hidden on your O/S. It is not unreasonable to ask "where do I go to make these changes" -- it's not a request to hold my hand. If the *only* reponse you can muster to such a question contains such pejorative language and attitude then I say you are dooming your platform to non-acceptance by anyone other than the few of you who are already there.
By the way, your response proved my point much better than I could have ever stated it myself.
That is just as valid as saying that the only thing holding back the widespread adoption of SkyOS is that Dell, Gateway, and the rest are not shipping boxes pre-loaded with that O/S.
If the product is not REQUESTED BY THE CONSUMER then it will never be put on the boxes! There was once a point in time when Windows was not pre-loaded on boxes, but did that stop Microsoft?
I think you're approaching this particular chicken & egg debate from the wrong angle. If the points raised in the article were all addressed then there would likely be the customer demand to pre-load and ship Open Source software.
(A close second to why that is such an absurd statement is that if the box makers could simply load OpenSourceWare and ship, then they won't have to pay any licensing fees and will make more $$$ -- which is something they are ALWAYS looking to do. Clearly, not enough people will buy machines that are configured as such or we would be seeing "Dude -- you're getting a Dell with Linux!" commercials.)
What turns me off the most about *nix cluture is the whole RTFM mentality. It reveals a fundamental arrogance and disrespect that is not needed either in user-user dialogue, or in the employer-employee dialogue.
When I was a new programmer fresh out of college, I too had a bit of the arrogant "I know more than the users do about what is right" attitude. As a more expereinced sage of a programmer on that first job related to me: it's not what you know or how much you think you know, or even if you are right -- if you don't do what is asked of you then your replacement will.
In the user-user dialogue this holds as well. Aside from the fact that.NET is not production-ready on anything other than Windows (yes, I know about Mono, and when there is an IDE running on Mono on Linux I'll begin paying attention to that project), I shun the idea of joining such an arrogant usership lest I accidently be mistaken as one of them, nor do I want to be browbeaten instead of getting an answer to a question.
A final, and slightly off-topic observation: I don't know which are more blindly zealous of their operating system, Linux users or Mac users, but I know that Mac users will go out of their way to help you learn and learn to love their chosen system while the linux users will tell you to essentially go f-yourself and continue using Windows if you don't instantly "get it." Again, you think your operating system will be globally adopted why???
Surely nobody will enter an admin password requested by an ".mp3" file...
Sure they will -- just like people click "Yes" to ActiveX installers in Internet Explorer on Windows. Actually, from a social engineering point of view, how many people using MacOS X know that it could be fishy if an app is asking for an admin password? And given MacOS X's stellar security record, why fret that the asking app should not be asking for root access? (Maybe I cannot possibly understand this because I am a Windows user and this is a Mac thing???)
Simply because MacOS is suddenly more like Unix doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to attract developers. Having the right set of tools available for developers to use will make MUCH MORE of a difference. Consider a product like RealBasic (http://www.realbasic.com/) that opens up the world of Apple (and now Linux) development to the MILLIONS of VB developers who until now could only program on Windows because that was the only option in their chosen language.
The trend of Unix and enterprise programmers moving to or "showing great interest" in MacOS X is something that could be a "tide that lifts all boats." Given that MacOS X is built on BSD and therefore a secure and nearly-bulletproof operating system), an upsurge in high quality, secure, robust enterprise calibre apps on the MacOS X platform will be great for business at large.
And rest assured that Microsoft will do something to respond to the competitive threat. If the threat of Java gave us.NET, then maybe the threat of MacOS X will bring a truly secure and robust Windows platform...
By the way, I was in the Navy as well, and participated in many, many of these operations...
Then you are aware of the converstaions that take place between the commanders at military intelligence and the Combat Information Center (CIC) watch officer, yes? You know, the transmissions that begin with phrases like "Tell the Coast Guard Watch Officer to leave CIC" so Posse Comitatus is not technically violated...
Yes, cooperation between the military and coast guard is well known. The extent of that cooperation and the legality of it is not.
One of the big pushes after 9-11 was for all of the intelligence agencies to "cooperate."
When I was in the navy we conducted counter narcotics patrols off the coast of Colombia and Panama. Since the military is not allowed to engage in law enforcement (that pesky Constitution and all) we simply had a Coast Guard team (they're Dept of Transportation and not Defense, so they *can* do law enforcement) that took care of the actual boarding of vessles and law enforcement. In fact, it had to be the Coast Guard person on watch who initiated the request to investivate/board a vessle. There was no "official" cooperation between the military and the Coast Guard on this, but when you get orders on the secure circuit to "think about getting to these coordinates in exactly 12 hours" which result in the Coastie on watch saying "Oh hey -- there's a boat... let's board him!" can you deny that there is unofficial cooperation going on?
(There were further stories about SEALS and other special forces folks who were officially discharged from the military and transferred to "another agency" for two weeks at a time in order to engage in "direct action law enforcement" before "deciding to reenter the military." It's call "sheep-dipping" and is just one more thing for the tin-foil-hatters to worry about...)
I suspect that this is probably what's going on with the NSA et al. If the agency in question either thinks/knows they're looking at a US citizen, they can just drop a pointer to the intel in the inbox of an agency who *can* legally handle it (Oh geez -- I wonder where *that* lead came from?). Or there are teams of "not officially NSA folks" who just happen to be working at NSA alongside the others who are legally allowed to investigate US citizens (similar to Coasties on US Naval vessles for counter-narc activities).
Take your pick as to the method in use or make up another, but I am pretty sure it's going on and will not be going away anytime soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude -- the unibomber is in jail and you will be too if you *really* believe that statement enough to put your trigger finger where your mouth is. I believe in overcoming stupidity with the light of reason, which is why Linux, OGG, and OSS in general will win in the end.
Save your ammo for the things you intend to serve for dinner...
Until such a day that OGG is SUBSTANTIALLY better quality at a SUBSTANTIALLY lower bitrate/file size, mp3 will be king. Have you -- or anyone else reading -- actually computed the number of tracks of difference that OGG versus MP3 makes in evaluating a portable music player? OGG is very nice, but MP3 plays EVERYWHERE which is why it's *the* digital file of reference. When OGG is supported by 99.999% of digital audio devices then it (and its supporters) will be able to rightfully complain of exclusion. Until then, let's focus on the substance of what's being discussed in the article rather than bickering over what are eventually irrelevant details.
I too am curious what the Next Big Thing(tm) in digital audio formats will be, but how much smaller/better quality is any new/evolved format going to be -- and with storage getting so much larger and cheaper, will it even matter?
For audio, I think the eventual winner will be the format not with the best quality per se, but the best lock-down ability (DRM) to get the major commercial people behind it. In terms of pure audio, I think OGG might be the best quality format for now, but has nobody built an *optional* framework for allowing content creators to protect their work? Is it any wonder M$ is ready to eat everyone's lunch in this regard with WMA/V? (On that point, is there not some OSS encryption/rights management project that could be joined to OGG and/or FLAC to enhance the commercial viability of high quality open audio formats?)
Video, on the other hand, is so different from audio I don't think it has a place in this discussion, but to your point of having it play everywhere, I have wondered why there isn't some open technology platform for packaged video (VCD, DVD, whatever is next and then after that). How hard would it be to define a menuing system on something flash-like, that the video files must be of format X (or any number of acceptable formats), and the acceptable DRM schemes will be "___", and then sit back watch the Chinese and Koreans compete on who can build it cheaper? Just my $0.02 on that slightly OT point...
It's interesting that this question was posed at this time because I just went through this process with my own music collection recently. I ripped everything to FLAC and then did lots of testing and evaluation as to what file format would be best for my "portable" files. OGG is nice; AAC is Apple's choice (and therefore has a certain sex appeal to it); Sony are being their eccentric selves by going the ATRAC-3 route, and WindowsMedia is, well, WindowsMedia.
The bottom line is this: is there any digital music device that *cannot* play MP3? Will there ever be a format as pervasive as MP3? Until I have reasonable certainty that I can take audio in "format X" and have it play on every device under the sun, I will stick with MP3 for lossy audio -- because it plays on every device under the sun.
Someone already mentioned that there is a design for putting a second CPU in the same "wind tunnel" as the 1-cpu design, but is there any reason there cannot be a BTX-SMP that simply puts multiple processors side-by-side -- like the Mac G5 design -- and adds a few inches in length to board to accomodate the second "wind tunnel?"
Any /. reader could figure out how to get their computer to play any streaming format ever made, but that doesn't do anything for folks not as "enlightened" / "have more of a life" than us. While OGG is certainly a very nice format, if the basic premise of the streaming is to provide a service of interest to mainly non-technical folks -- like those *primarily* into 80's music -- then you might have to consider the possibility of not using the *coolest* format and opt instead for the most *available* format.
I am sure that CowboyNeal endorsing Michael Badnarik and Libertarians at large would have more of an impact than most newspaper endorsements. :-)
I was in the navy for almost five years, and overseas at the time of the 1996 presidential elections. It usually took five to seven (often longer) days for mail to get back to my family at home and the same time to get to me -- if my ship was in port when the mail arrived.
The article cited said that Broward county officials were overnighting the ballots to folks outside of the county. The way the military mail system works you've got regional post offices (APO/FPO) through which all the military mail flows. Getting the ballots to them *today* does nothing to expedite them the rest of the way to the service members, and certainly does nothing for the return trip.
The point is, because there is such a delay in getting mail to/from military members, there is absolutely no way that resending absentee ballots now will allow them to be returned by the deadline (which is Tuesday in most jurisdictions). When you figure that the military tends to vote heavily republican, sending out the ballots late is good enough for a "soft kill" of a net gain of thousands of republican votes.
While this should be a national outrage -- denying the vote to the very men and women who continue to guarantee our rights, frequently with their own blood -- I expect this story will get its cursory day or two of coverage before getting buried under other stories and nobody will ever be tried for this, much less see the inside of a jail cell.
All the new hard drive mp3 player are called iPod competitors because Apple's iPod owns about 92% of that particular market. Ergo, they are the de facto incumbent against which all new entries will be compared and against which all new players must compete in order to make any sales.
(For my part, I am still trying to decide between the iRiver H140 or the 40GB iPod for my Christmas gift to me...)
No, they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning, but if they change the debate then they've won. More importantly, if we were to hear any coverage about the third parties we would hear a message that MANY of us care a great deal about which neither of the "major" parties will dare discuss: immigration. Have you heard one word from Kerry or Bush about stopping the flood of ILLEGAL aliens across the southern border? Have you anything about rounding up all the ILLEGAL aliens currently here and throwing them out of the country? Laws don't mean a hell of a lot when neither the elected executives nor the do-nothing legislators completely ignore such a massively important problem like ILLEGAL immigration, one with huge negative economic and national security implications!
Perot might not have won in 1992, but he DID make Tweedle-dumb and Tweedle-dee talk about NAFTA... the same could happen now if the third parties were allowed to raise the issue of ILLEGAL immigrants, and that would be a win for democracy!
I know that the Greens, the Libertarians, the Natural Law Party, the Constitution Party and others would like to have their voices individually heard and to be covered more in the news, what's the chance that they could collectively make "breaking up the Republican-Democrat duopoly" the #1 goal in their platforms? If they were *all* in agreement on this point I think there would be more notice given to all "third party" candidates.
Or under the Patriot Act, whether you confess or not you go to jail for an undetermined period of time, during which charges may or may not be filed against you...
Preprogrammed based on what we *think* are the actual conditions there... now the landing will prove whether or not the readings and predictions were right. Considering there is not going to be any way to adjust for surprises on the way down I think that would qualify for at least mildly ticky...
That's a perfectly valid reason to run! If all the /.'ers joined up get a candidate whose platform is centered on open source software and technology at all levels of government as a means of saving money, while that candidate won't win she might convince the two big parties to pay more attention to open source issues, which is a win in it's own right. It's all about free speech and free exchange of ideas. I would think a bunch of linux nerds would understand that concept!
I totally agree that two options are not enough. Furthermore, why, when several of the "third party options" are on the ballots in all 50 states, or at least enough to theoretically carry the election (for example, if everyone decides to vote Libertarian in November then we'll be calling a guy named Badnarik the President), why are they not allowed to be in the "official" presidential debates? When Ross Perot got into the debates in 1992 he succeeded in getting the other two parties to focus on trade issues (NAFTA) more than foreign policy (Iraq). I don't think there will ever be a President from the Green, Libertarian, or Reform parties, but they should have the opportunity to have their voices heard in the debates!
Okay, I realize that the credit agencies have to use *something* to uniquely identify people for credit check purposes, but is it necessary to use an SSN? I work in the health care industry where SSN is *usually* used to identify folks. Kaiser Permanente has already moved to using "health record ID" numbers; Blue Cross (the parent company of New Directions Behavioral Health -- my employer) is moving to erradicate the use of SSN's as primary identification of health records starting this fall.
Why can't the credit agencies follow suit and use something other than an SSN to uniquely identify us also?
From the MS website:
Given that email headers indicate the IP address of the originating email server, and the 'from address' indicated the alleged originating domain, isn't this already possible by means of a simple DNS lookup?Or is that CallerID really is under the hood and MS is trying to 'license' it to folks?
(Amd with all the money MS has, can't they hire tech writers who know not to end a sentence with a preposition???)
What is intuitive to you may not be to someone else, including someone who is quite savvy on another platform but unfamiliar with the general way of doing things on Linux.
There are plenty of things (browsing directories, mounting/unmounting media, configuring devices) that I understand how to do. What I don't know is where config file or control panel is hidden on your O/S. It is not unreasonable to ask "where do I go to make these changes" -- it's not a request to hold my hand. If the *only* reponse you can muster to such a question contains such pejorative language and attitude then I say you are dooming your platform to non-acceptance by anyone other than the few of you who are already there.
By the way, your response proved my point much better than I could have ever stated it myself.
That is just as valid as saying that the only thing holding back the widespread adoption of SkyOS is that Dell, Gateway, and the rest are not shipping boxes pre-loaded with that O/S.
If the product is not REQUESTED BY THE CONSUMER then it will never be put on the boxes! There was once a point in time when Windows was not pre-loaded on boxes, but did that stop Microsoft?
I think you're approaching this particular chicken & egg debate from the wrong angle. If the points raised in the article were all addressed then there would likely be the customer demand to pre-load and ship Open Source software.
(A close second to why that is such an absurd statement is that if the box makers could simply load OpenSourceWare and ship, then they won't have to pay any licensing fees and will make more $$$ -- which is something they are ALWAYS looking to do. Clearly, not enough people will buy machines that are configured as such or we would be seeing "Dude -- you're getting a Dell with Linux!" commercials.)
What turns me off the most about *nix cluture is the whole RTFM mentality. It reveals a fundamental arrogance and disrespect that is not needed either in user-user dialogue, or in the employer-employee dialogue.
.NET is not production-ready on anything other than Windows (yes, I know about Mono, and when there is an IDE running on Mono on Linux I'll begin paying attention to that project), I shun the idea of joining such an arrogant usership lest I accidently be mistaken as one of them, nor do I want to be browbeaten instead of getting an answer to a question.
When I was a new programmer fresh out of college, I too had a bit of the arrogant "I know more than the users do about what is right" attitude. As a more expereinced sage of a programmer on that first job related to me: it's not what you know or how much you think you know, or even if you are right -- if you don't do what is asked of you then your replacement will.
In the user-user dialogue this holds as well. Aside from the fact that
A final, and slightly off-topic observation: I don't know which are more blindly zealous of their operating system, Linux users or Mac users, but I know that Mac users will go out of their way to help you learn and learn to love their chosen system while the linux users will tell you to essentially go f-yourself and continue using Windows if you don't instantly "get it." Again, you think your operating system will be globally adopted why???
Surely nobody will enter an admin password requested by an ".mp3" file...
Sure they will -- just like people click "Yes" to ActiveX installers in Internet Explorer on Windows. Actually, from a social engineering point of view, how many people using MacOS X know that it could be fishy if an app is asking for an admin password? And given MacOS X's stellar security record, why fret that the asking app should not be asking for root access? (Maybe I cannot possibly understand this because I am a Windows user and this is a Mac thing???)
Simply because MacOS is suddenly more like Unix doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to attract developers. Having the right set of tools available for developers to use will make MUCH MORE of a difference. Consider a product like RealBasic (http://www.realbasic.com/) that opens up the world of Apple (and now Linux) development to the MILLIONS of VB developers who until now could only program on Windows because that was the only option in their chosen language.
The trend of Unix and enterprise programmers moving to or "showing great interest" in MacOS X is something that could be a "tide that lifts all boats." Given that MacOS X is built on BSD and therefore a secure and nearly-bulletproof operating system), an upsurge in high quality, secure, robust enterprise calibre apps on the MacOS X platform will be great for business at large.
.NET, then maybe the threat of MacOS X will bring a truly secure and robust Windows platform...
And rest assured that Microsoft will do something to respond to the competitive threat. If the threat of Java gave us
By the way, I was in the Navy as well, and participated in many, many of these operations...
Then you are aware of the converstaions that take place between the commanders at military intelligence and the Combat Information Center (CIC) watch officer, yes? You know, the transmissions that begin with phrases like "Tell the Coast Guard Watch Officer to leave CIC" so Posse Comitatus is not technically violated...
Yes, cooperation between the military and coast guard is well known. The extent of that cooperation and the legality of it is not.
One of the big pushes after 9-11 was for all of the intelligence agencies to "cooperate."
When I was in the navy we conducted counter narcotics patrols off the coast of Colombia and Panama. Since the military is not allowed to engage in law enforcement (that pesky Constitution and all) we simply had a Coast Guard team (they're Dept of Transportation and not Defense, so they *can* do law enforcement) that took care of the actual boarding of vessles and law enforcement. In fact, it had to be the Coast Guard person on watch who initiated the request to investivate/board a vessle. There was no "official" cooperation between the military and the Coast Guard on this, but when you get orders on the secure circuit to "think about getting to these coordinates in exactly 12 hours" which result in the Coastie on watch saying "Oh hey -- there's a boat... let's board him!" can you deny that there is unofficial cooperation going on?
(There were further stories about SEALS and other special forces folks who were officially discharged from the military and transferred to "another agency" for two weeks at a time in order to engage in "direct action law enforcement" before "deciding to reenter the military." It's call "sheep-dipping" and is just one more thing for the tin-foil-hatters to worry about...)
I suspect that this is probably what's going on with the NSA et al. If the agency in question either thinks/knows they're looking at a US citizen, they can just drop a pointer to the intel in the inbox of an agency who *can* legally handle it (Oh geez -- I wonder where *that* lead came from?). Or there are teams of "not officially NSA folks" who just happen to be working at NSA alongside the others who are legally allowed to investigate US citizens (similar to Coasties on US Naval vessles for counter-narc activities).
Take your pick as to the method in use or make up another, but I am pretty sure it's going on and will not be going away anytime soon.