The powers that be want Assange captured and made an example of. So if he's not done in by these charges, they'll find something else to go after him with, and keep trying until he's in prison, killed, or the world hates him. And that's not to say these charges aren't legit. It's just awfully suspicious, especially since the first time they went after him for this another prosecutor stepped in and had the matter dropped.
I think we can also safely give Assange the title of International Man of Mystery.
Trillion dollar wars that kill tens of thousands are OK when our government tells us they are protecting us from terrorist attacks.
Actually, current polls suggest that they aren't ok with the public. That doesn't mean they'll end, though, because there's now bipartisan consensus that the wars continue, popular support or no popular support. At this rate, I think some college kids will have to get shot by the National Guard in order for the wars to actually end.
For instance, former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, who just happens to have a significant financial interest in the company that made the naked-scan machines that the TSA are now using.
Re:What's the deal with the rush of TSA stories re
on
TSA Pats Down 3-Year-Old
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The bit about being threatened with lawsuits was in reference to a recent case in San Diego where a passenger made the choice to leave the airport rather than consent to the search and was threatened with a lawsuit for doing so.
So what you're saying is that if there's a 0.00001% chance that somebody who looks like a nun is a terrorist, and a 0.01% chance that somebody who looks like a young Arab male is a terrorist, we should search every young Arab male and miss the terrorist nuns? Oh, and there's also the not-insignificant problem that any terrorist who notices this sort of profiling will simply recruit a lighter-skinned female terrorist and dress her up like a nun.
What I think you're actually saying here is "Go ahead and violate other people's rights, just don't mess the rights of people like me." They came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist...
Re:What's the deal with the rush of TSA stories re
on
TSA Pats Down 3-Year-Old
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It's a non-story that US citizen's constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure are getting violated? It's a non-story that the government is now examining and groping genitalia without any suspicion of wrongdoing? It's a non-story that people are being threatened with lawsuits by the government for asserting their rights?
Tell me, exactly what does the US government have to do to its citizens for it to be newsworthy?
All my schooling prior to college was in a public school system. While they didn't pay their teachers at great rates, they were better than most of the surrounding area, which definitely helped. I had a mix, but most were either competent or better than competent. My second grade teacher in particular did some really innovative math teaching, and my fifth grade teacher taught me a great deal about writing well rather than just writing correctly.
But none of that really counts as evidence. What might count is that my public high school had higher average SAT and AP scores (among those who chose to take those exams) than either the Catholic high school or the private rich-kids high school in the same area.
In addition to technical writing, being good at English will also help you speak more effectively. Speaking and writing effectively are exactly the skills you need to make yourself understood by users, fellow programmers, testers, administrators, and the poor sap who has to maintain your code 5 years later.
For instance, compare this comment:
/* Allocate available memory block */
with this comment describing the same function:
/* In this function, I loop through the linked list of available memory blocks, and find the first one that is marked as free, mark it as allocated, and return a pointer to that block. */
Don't worry - his clients obviously take academic ethics about as seriously as they take business ethics. I mean, it's not like this newly minted MBA who can't spell properly would go on to, say, take on some important job like managing mortgage-backed securities for Countrywide Financial.
I'm with Hawking on this one: The purpose of space colonization is to give humanity a chance to survive in case something goes catastrophically wrong with Earth. Let's say, for instance, that there's a nuclear war on Earth. Now, Dr Strangelove may be able to keep some folks alive in the bottom of mine shafts, but it's still risky. If on the other hand you have a self-sufficient Mars colony, the Martians can wait until Earth becomes habitable again, and recolonize Earth.
Think of it as a global insurance policy. Of course, the problem is that it's not in any individual's interest to fund it, even if it is in our collective interest.
And I have no illusions about how difficult that sort of thing would be, which is why I'd want to get started on this sort of project sooner rather than later, so we have more time to find all the ways we could screw it up before we really need it.
Except of course that people are using these numbers to do something important.
And this isn't just an idle problem: There have been colleges, pension funds, charitable foundations, and retirees crippled financially for decades because they looked at companies like Enron which were generating good consistent returns and decided that it was a good investment. This stuff does real damage to people, and the SEC simply doesn't have the resources to stop it.
I'm not entirely sure, although my best guess is nations other than the US that were affected by the spill.
My point is that BP is not an altruistic organization, and is required by law to do what's in the best interests of their shareholders, so they have a financial reason for doing what they're doing. It may not be a short-term financial reason, but it's there nonetheless.
One significant difference between the two is that BP has accepted it's responsibility and has voluntarily waived the $75m statutory limit on monetary damages (contained in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990), instead establishing a $20bn compensation fund. And that's on top of the clean-up costs.
On the flip side, that could be an indication that BP thought at the time that the actual damages would end up being way higher than $20bn. For corporations, the bottom line is the bottom line, and they aren't going to spend that kind of money without a reason why that spending will either mitigate risk, reduce costs, or increase profits.
Here's what I actually suspect: BP and Halliburton were both responsible to some degree. Because of that, the companies will insist on separate trials if it ever gets to court, and the defense in each of the two trials will be "the other guy did it". That way, neither of them has to actually take responsibility for their actions.
For what, you ask? Negligent homicide. Because somebody decided to drill in a situation they knew to be unsafe, putting the lives of everyone on the rig, including those with no choice in the matter, at risk for the sake of profits. A few criminal prosecutions would change that culture quickly, otherwise it's just a cost of doing business.
I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I'm also not one to judge a technology on its first day or first week of sales. For one very specific reason - nobody's used it for any significant length of time yet.
It takes a while to determine if some technology is really really nice, or a complete piece of crap. If you base your judgment on a slick demo plus 5 minutes of use, you're in fact no better than the infamous PHB who decides to use some horrible technology due to a really good sales pitch. Admins generally need a good 6 months to figure out whether something is really easy to manage, and consumers generally take a while to discover the nooks and crannies of a phone or software or anything else.
And this goes both for the good and the bad. For instance, users might be pleasantly surprised to find out that the developers actually knew about some rare but possible situation and had done the right thing (the Nethack dev team is notorious for doing just that). They might also find out that something that they actually do a lot was more annoying than they thought.
I've never been a senior game developer, but it looks to me like the real problem is that the industry has decided that time-to-market trumps any and all other concerns. They'd much rather have a bad game in 4 months than a really good game in 12 months.
The only thing I can figure is that 3 bad games get more revenue than 1 good game, which doesn't make any sense. A bad game picks up a bunch of early adopters who were suckered in by the hype, but within 2 months there's no market for it. A good game can produce good revenue for years - Starcraft sold for years after it was released. So why make bad games instead of good games?
If the NSA has something that really is Schneier-proof, they wouldn't tell the public. And understandably so, since part of their job is in part to ensure signal security for US agencies that deal in classified information.
This sounds like a very very familiar discussion. Specifically, we had this exact same problem about 10-15 years ago when search spammers had learned how to game results on Yahoo and AltaVista with stupid meta tags and repeating the same words over and over to increase their ranking.
Google figured out a way to get around that problem, which produced a massively better search engine. It sounds like the search spammers are now figuring out how to game the Google results, so in another year or two we'll be right back in the big mess that Internet search used to be.
If you want a significantly different picture from your own employment experience, read about what was going on in the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia before the big accident. Or the many workers who are killed or maimed in preventable industrial accidents. Or the retail workers forced to work longer than the hours they put on their time card. Or the workers fired for trying to unionize. Or the workers fired for complaining about safety regulation violations. Or even better, get to know some blue-collar folks and hear about their life on the job.
Assuming you're a techie of some sort, your job probably involves sitting comfortably in an office thinking, typing, and discussing. Most jobs are nothing like that.
Slashdot Mirror
The powers that be want Assange captured and made an example of. So if he's not done in by these charges, they'll find something else to go after him with, and keep trying until he's in prison, killed, or the world hates him. And that's not to say these charges aren't legit. It's just awfully suspicious, especially since the first time they went after him for this another prosecutor stepped in and had the matter dropped.
I think we can also safely give Assange the title of International Man of Mystery.
Trillion dollar wars that kill tens of thousands are OK when our government tells us they are protecting us from terrorist attacks.
Actually, current polls suggest that they aren't ok with the public. That doesn't mean they'll end, though, because there's now bipartisan consensus that the wars continue, popular support or no popular support. At this rate, I think some college kids will have to get shot by the National Guard in order for the wars to actually end.
For instance, former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, who just happens to have a significant financial interest in the company that made the naked-scan machines that the TSA are now using.
The bit about being threatened with lawsuits was in reference to a recent case in San Diego where a passenger made the choice to leave the airport rather than consent to the search and was threatened with a lawsuit for doing so.
So what you're saying is that if there's a 0.00001% chance that somebody who looks like a nun is a terrorist, and a 0.01% chance that somebody who looks like a young Arab male is a terrorist, we should search every young Arab male and miss the terrorist nuns? Oh, and there's also the not-insignificant problem that any terrorist who notices this sort of profiling will simply recruit a lighter-skinned female terrorist and dress her up like a nun.
What I think you're actually saying here is "Go ahead and violate other people's rights, just don't mess the rights of people like me." They came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist...
It's a non-story that US citizen's constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure are getting violated? It's a non-story that the government is now examining and groping genitalia without any suspicion of wrongdoing? It's a non-story that people are being threatened with lawsuits by the government for asserting their rights?
Tell me, exactly what does the US government have to do to its citizens for it to be newsworthy?
I can argue by anecdote too!
All my schooling prior to college was in a public school system. While they didn't pay their teachers at great rates, they were better than most of the surrounding area, which definitely helped. I had a mix, but most were either competent or better than competent. My second grade teacher in particular did some really innovative math teaching, and my fifth grade teacher taught me a great deal about writing well rather than just writing correctly.
But none of that really counts as evidence. What might count is that my public high school had higher average SAT and AP scores (among those who chose to take those exams) than either the Catholic high school or the private rich-kids high school in the same area.
Well, the real reason this matters is that similar technology could be used to attach a laser beam to the head of a shark.
In addition to technical writing, being good at English will also help you speak more effectively. Speaking and writing effectively are exactly the skills you need to make yourself understood by users, fellow programmers, testers, administrators, and the poor sap who has to maintain your code 5 years later.
For instance, compare this comment:
/* Allocate available memory block */
with this comment describing the same function:
/* In this function, I loop through the linked list of available memory blocks, and find the first one that is marked as free, mark it as allocated, and return a pointer to that block. */
Which code would you rather maintain?
Don't worry - his clients obviously take academic ethics about as seriously as they take business ethics. I mean, it's not like this newly minted MBA who can't spell properly would go on to, say, take on some important job like managing mortgage-backed securities for Countrywide Financial.
What do you think the point of colonization is?
I'm with Hawking on this one: The purpose of space colonization is to give humanity a chance to survive in case something goes catastrophically wrong with Earth. Let's say, for instance, that there's a nuclear war on Earth. Now, Dr Strangelove may be able to keep some folks alive in the bottom of mine shafts, but it's still risky. If on the other hand you have a self-sufficient Mars colony, the Martians can wait until Earth becomes habitable again, and recolonize Earth.
Think of it as a global insurance policy. Of course, the problem is that it's not in any individual's interest to fund it, even if it is in our collective interest.
And I have no illusions about how difficult that sort of thing would be, which is why I'd want to get started on this sort of project sooner rather than later, so we have more time to find all the ways we could screw it up before we really need it.
Except of course that people are using these numbers to do something important.
And this isn't just an idle problem: There have been colleges, pension funds, charitable foundations, and retirees crippled financially for decades because they looked at companies like Enron which were generating good consistent returns and decided that it was a good investment. This stuff does real damage to people, and the SEC simply doesn't have the resources to stop it.
I'm not entirely sure, although my best guess is nations other than the US that were affected by the spill.
My point is that BP is not an altruistic organization, and is required by law to do what's in the best interests of their shareholders, so they have a financial reason for doing what they're doing. It may not be a short-term financial reason, but it's there nonetheless.
One significant difference between the two is that BP has accepted it's responsibility and has voluntarily waived the $75m statutory limit on monetary damages (contained in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990), instead establishing a $20bn compensation fund. And that's on top of the clean-up costs.
On the flip side, that could be an indication that BP thought at the time that the actual damages would end up being way higher than $20bn. For corporations, the bottom line is the bottom line, and they aren't going to spend that kind of money without a reason why that spending will either mitigate risk, reduce costs, or increase profits.
I can't stand her myself...the things she says makes me want to slam my head in a file cabinet drawer
See, this is what makes me different from you. The things she says makes me want to slame her head in a file cabinet drawer.
Here's what I actually suspect: BP and Halliburton were both responsible to some degree. Because of that, the companies will insist on separate trials if it ever gets to court, and the defense in each of the two trials will be "the other guy did it". That way, neither of them has to actually take responsibility for their actions.
For what, you ask? Negligent homicide. Because somebody decided to drill in a situation they knew to be unsafe, putting the lives of everyone on the rig, including those with no choice in the matter, at risk for the sake of profits. A few criminal prosecutions would change that culture quickly, otherwise it's just a cost of doing business.
Rose Mary Woods
(Ok, not anymore, but if they'd come out with this a few years ago she would have been perfect.)
This is a Mutually Assured Destruction fight, but unlike others with this strategy I'm not going to be hit.
You would have thought that these Fortune 500 companies would figure out that the only winning move is not to play.
I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I'm also not one to judge a technology on its first day or first week of sales. For one very specific reason - nobody's used it for any significant length of time yet.
It takes a while to determine if some technology is really really nice, or a complete piece of crap. If you base your judgment on a slick demo plus 5 minutes of use, you're in fact no better than the infamous PHB who decides to use some horrible technology due to a really good sales pitch. Admins generally need a good 6 months to figure out whether something is really easy to manage, and consumers generally take a while to discover the nooks and crannies of a phone or software or anything else.
And this goes both for the good and the bad. For instance, users might be pleasantly surprised to find out that the developers actually knew about some rare but possible situation and had done the right thing (the Nethack dev team is notorious for doing just that). They might also find out that something that they actually do a lot was more annoying than they thought.
I've never been a senior game developer, but it looks to me like the real problem is that the industry has decided that time-to-market trumps any and all other concerns. They'd much rather have a bad game in 4 months than a really good game in 12 months.
The only thing I can figure is that 3 bad games get more revenue than 1 good game, which doesn't make any sense. A bad game picks up a bunch of early adopters who were suckered in by the hype, but within 2 months there's no market for it. A good game can produce good revenue for years - Starcraft sold for years after it was released. So why make bad games instead of good games?
If the NSA has something that really is Schneier-proof, they wouldn't tell the public. And understandably so, since part of their job is in part to ensure signal security for US agencies that deal in classified information.
This sounds like a very very familiar discussion. Specifically, we had this exact same problem about 10-15 years ago when search spammers had learned how to game results on Yahoo and AltaVista with stupid meta tags and repeating the same words over and over to increase their ranking.
Google figured out a way to get around that problem, which produced a massively better search engine. It sounds like the search spammers are now figuring out how to game the Google results, so in another year or two we'll be right back in the big mess that Internet search used to be.
At first I thought the court had returned a stolen Stargate, not a stolen Stargate *MMO*. Which would have been much bigger news, that's for sure.
Spoken like someone who's never worked in the US
... in a white-collar office job like yours.
If you want a significantly different picture from your own employment experience, read about what was going on in the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia before the big accident. Or the many workers who are killed or maimed in preventable industrial accidents. Or the retail workers forced to work longer than the hours they put on their time card. Or the workers fired for trying to unionize. Or the workers fired for complaining about safety regulation violations. Or even better, get to know some blue-collar folks and hear about their life on the job.
Assuming you're a techie of some sort, your job probably involves sitting comfortably in an office thinking, typing, and discussing. Most jobs are nothing like that.