I'm still on the fence whether the idea that use of lethal force in self defense in such situations is really a natural born right. Yeah, you have right to defend yourself, but that I'm not really sure that this right, ethically, automatically implies the right to manslaughter. Aren't there plenty of non-lethal ways of incapacitating intruders that are just as easy to use as a gun would be? Why the heck are people so eager to kill others?
I think it comes down to the argument of "shoot me, or I will shoot you/your loved one". It's totally wrong to kill another human being under any circumstances. Someone who has placed me in that situation, however, has just defined themselves as no longer a human being, because a human being would never put another human being in that situation in the first place.
When you believe your life is in danger, or you believe someone else's life is in danger, it's moral to use deadly force in defense of the person in harms way.
This is why "suicide by cop" is even in our vocabulary in the first place. It's also why an officer involved shooting that is determined to be under those circumstances carries no professional stigma against the officer, and the officer suffers neither discipline nor snactions, other than mandatory counseling. If it's any consolation, if you were to shoot someone invading your baby daughters bedroom through the window, I'd recommend counseling for you too, even though I'd call it a justifiable homicide and acquit you of criminal charges.
One possible "response" they could provide is "piss off".
You'll also note the Rule 7(i) Security Clearance information proviso for the EFF counsel; so even if they get to see the information, it doesn't meant that you get to see the information, or that they can subsequently re-disclose.
A woman is crossing a dark parking lot at night; she sees someone in a hoodie on the other side of the parking lot. The person in the hoodie obviously notices her with a predatory pause and tarts moving towards her Her car is between them. She runs for the car, the bad guy starts running towards her. She gets in RFID range; the car notices the keys in her purse. She reaches the drivers side of her car just as the bad guy reaches the passengers side. She opens the door because the RFID has authorized it. The bad guy opens the passenger door, because the RFID has authorized it.
Isn't she happy she had the RFID?
Gun:
You get into your house. You hear a crash from the bedroom. You run to investigate. A burglar has just successfully opened your gun case. He tries to shoot you; the gun fails to go off. You rush over. You struggle. You get in RFID range. The gun goes off during the struggle, and you're shot.
Conspiracy bits aside, if the FBI found something, why would they demand he open the gates to more?
Could they not simply prosecute him based on just what they have so far? That way there would be no 5th Amendment violation, and they would (should?) have sufficient evidence so far to successfully prosecute him anyway.
[ Realize up front that I think people like they are accusing the defendant of being should probably burn, not in Hell, but in the here and now... ]
I imagine it's to set a precedent.
If the demand is not successfully defended against, they are more likely to be granted a future order without expending "considerable resources". The next time, they will be able to argue "we could expend considerable resources and crack this drive too, but since it's going to be decrypted one way or the other, you might as well have him hand over the keys now". It's a really thin wedge, given that the FBI claiming someone owns a drive when they don't claim ownership, so 5th amendment considerations would likely still attach, but they might be able to find an agreeable judge to push the precedent a little further.
Using the sparing sector list as part of the key might confound decryption, if the encryption is drive level rather than all in user space where it could be fed a false set of sparing sectors, so it's possible that future SanDisk products (among other SSD vendors) might be immune from use of forensic copies.
I think though, that 5th amendment issues might still attach, if they can't demonstrate that he actually has the keys. It'll be interesting to see if the defense tries to play it that way, and what results, if any, come from that angle.
The "it's manufactured data" angle would also be interesting, since presumably they could have obtained pictures and financial data from other sources to make it appear that way. Given that the FBI has "considerable resources" to expend on this type of thing, it's not that unreasonable to ask how those resources were expended: decrypting the drive, or manufacturing evidence which can only be disproven if the drive is decrypted with the keys he may or may not have in his possession, since if it's manufactured, it might still not be his drive.
I'm glad the court ruled against the forced decryption initially, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out, and whether the FBI gets their wedge, and if so, they are successful in using it to leverage further erosions of 5th amendment in a future case, or not.
How is blocking ad revenue from sites distributing content without the appropriate license "too much censorship"? It's the correct approach. Or would you argue you should be free to profit from the operation of planes, trains, or automobiles ( or truck) without an the appropriate license?
Pilots licenses were not mandatory in the US until 1917, following a Massachusetts state law in 1913, so for planes, at least, the answer was "yes", for 10 years.
For trains, it's controlled by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, which is a division of the teamsters union, and it's handled through an apprenticeship program, starting with conductor, then brakeman,... all the way to engineer. The first railroad, the B&O (Baltimore and Ohio) was opened in 1830, and it wasn't until the 1880's that certification was enforced (after the strikes against the railroads and the Pullman Palace Car Company). Certification was adopted as a defensive reaction to the Pinkertons hired to put down the strikes (violently, with man deaths), since it meant that non-union "scabs" might be brought in, but they would still not be able to legally operate the trains. So for 50 years, the answer for trains was "yes".
Automobile licenses were not required from 1886, when Benz created the first internal combustion engine, until 1888; this was mostly because the people of Mannheim complained about the noise and smell, and the license was technically from the Dutchy, and not actually a license. In North America, there were state laws in 1910 (New York) and 1913 (New Jersey - the first state to require passing a test). So in the US, the answer was "yes", for over 20 years.
So, licenses serve two purposes: (1) prevent other people from entering the field, so as to raise the relative value of the labor allowed to operate in the field, and ensure collective bargaining power for those allowed to participate, and (2) as a revenue mechanism for the state.
The public safety argument is relatively moot, as raising the speed limit from 55 back to it's pre-Jan 2nd 1972 limits (or higher in some areas) has demonstrated (the limit was imposed due to the "energy crisis" at the time, not for public safety, and kept because it was a pretty nice cash cow for a lot of local governments). Highway deaths are inversely proportional to the effectiveness of vehicle safety systems, and not speed limit.
Practically speaking, you're better off letting people get into accidents, and then penalizing them after the fact for causing the accident. Several studies on red light cameras have demonstrated this, since people see a yellow light and slam on their brakes to avoid a red light camera ticket -- which in California can not be appealed unless you can demonstrate that the yellow light at the intersection in question lasts less than 4.8 seconds. This because some municipalities were speeding up the yellow lights to increase red light camera ticket revenue.
So yeah, there's a lot of things you should be able to do without a license, like operating a hot dog cart, for which licenses are required, but actually do nothing.
I'm reminded of when my driver's license was stolen; I went to the DMV to get them to reissue a new on, and asked for a different number. They wouldn't give me one, even with a police report, until I squawked up to a supervisor. It's the same number with a 'B". But considered in retrospect, did their issuing the new number and invalidating the old one stop the thief from using the license as identification? No. They got someone who looked like me to place a mail hold at the post office, with the intent of picking up my mail, including credit card and other statements, as well as credit card issued based on identity theft at a later date. I missed getting my mail two days in a row when I was expecting a letter, which is how I found out. The point of this story is that a driver's license does nothing for me, including legally identify me, unless the
Semyon Grigoryev is director at the NEFU Museum of Mammoths, not a molecular biologist. The DNA was recovered by a Japanese colleague. So yeah, it's possible he knows more. I think I know more, but I'm on the record as predicting the premature senescence of Dolly the sheep to NBC News the days of the announcement that it had been cloned.
FWIW: This particular discovery is a repeat of one in 2012, and an earlier one in 2011, so the guy is pretty good at finding mammoth corpses. This repeats every several years:
This isn't to detract from Semyon Grigoryev (although I wish he had his credentials published online somewhere Google could find them), since it's pretty obvious that when he goes out to find mammoths or mammoth parts, he finds them.
It's somewhat reasonable to be worried... if you are an investor. No one else should much care. So ignore all the journalists who are not business/financial in nature.
Historically, Apple has an approximately 6 month announcement cycle which corresponds to biannual major public events, one for developers in the fall, and one for everyone else in the spring. At these events, it alternately announces its new desktop/laptop hardware, and then its new iDevices.
This is one of the few times they've missed their spring announcement in almost a decade; the last time was when Tiger slipped shipping for over six months, and that coincided with a claim of a new 18 month development cycle which lasted only one release cycle. This was actually occasioned by some major management screw-ups internally, coinciding with the first major drop-off in Steve's health.
Apple has been pretty religious about keeping to this schedule, even through the power shift in 2008/2009 when the taller Oompa Loompsa realized they were more or less in charge of the steering wheel of the chocolate factory, should they want to fight each other to steer.
The iPhone 5 was more or less a fizzle. They're selling OK, but the difference in aspect ratio, made for economic rather than design reasons, combined with the maps change and other changes resulting from non-renewal of contracts with third party vendors, including Google, made it probably the worst launch for an iDevice and an iOS release in Apple history. Technologically, they are a step away from design being the goal in a design/cost tradeoff, and a step backwards in system software.
Mountain Lion sold well, but only because they dropped the upgrade price to practically nothing. It was a more or less bug fix release for things that should have never been released in Lion in the first place, and the "Game Center" was a non-feature (no games), and the "Message Center" was moving iOS features into a desktop OS, which makes sense for some of them, but when Facebook integration failed to materialize, even in updates, it's potential utility went down.
It's pretty clear I called the code on the patient way too early myself, but given that it's hovering at around 60% of its high of about 8 months ago, I'd say it was a matter of "when" not "if" the product pipeline would be drying up.
talking about the IT trade / tech schools / people who learn on there own / all the IT boot camps / ECT.
The first two aren't going to get you an interview at Google, Apple, IBM, Facebook, Twitter, Oracle, or a bunch of other companies. You will probably not land an interview in the top 50 most desirable places to work, based on those credentials alone.
The third one wont land you the interview at all.
The fourth one is pretty meaningless in terms of you actually knowing anything; if you pay your $, you will walk away with the participation certificate; teaching you anything is ancillary to the extraction of the money from your wallet.
If you have experience, with the first three you might crack into an interview in the bottom half of the top 50. Call it 10 years of experience, working for a small or medium size company where you were not one of the founders or one of their relatives, and where the company actually has a reputation other than "never heard of it". Bonus points if it was sold in an acquisition, and part of your experience is them keeping you on after the acquisition.
The third one, being an autodidact, will be more likely to actually get you past the interview and into a job. For example, if you've read all of Knuth's books, and can identify the "big O" notation of various algorithms, and apply them to problems. Bonus for having read and memorized the additional algorithms in Robert Sedgewick's Algorithms in C++ book, particularly the ones related to graph theory.
IT bootcamps and certifications get you nowhere; they make you look like an idiot who thinks that those things are actually useful to anyone other than the company selling them. An MSCE will generally get you negative points with most IT shops these days. Exceptions: Cisco certification gets you points, Oracle certification gets you points - it's possible to fail either of these, and if you do, you don't get the certification, no matter how much money you throw at them. But in the end, all it means is that you're pretty good at memorizing technical manuals, which is a useful skill, but not sufficient to land you a job.
Here are the end-runs around all of this:
(1) Start a famous Open Source project. The company that wants to control the project, or fund it because they use it, but is enlightened enough to let you keep editorial control, will find you: no interview needed.
(2) Be a significant contributor to an Open Source project. Linux commit privileges are a plus; being an area editor like Ingo Molnar, or in a particular vertical stack, like the input event system, the startup event process, the USB stack, or the networking stack is the biggest plus you can get.
(3) Be a manager somewhere, and work your way into the technology industry; this won't get you a top-tier company job, but could land you in the bottom 1/3 of the top 50. The top tiers all get their managers by (A) promoting from within, or (B) acquiring a company where the person was already a manager; Google works this way, Apple works this way. IBM and Novell work by you being a manager somewhere else, and working your way up a management track. IBM sometimes works like Google and Apple, but without real academic credentials, preferrably post graduate, don't expect that you can be a manager at Almaden or T.J. Watson research, etc., unless you have been a manager at IBM about 15 years and worked your way past the level where you deal with technical issues.
IT jobs are not like plumbing; you don't go in with some aptitude, get apprenticed, become a journeyman, and work your way up to master. IT jobs are not things you lean to do at trade/tech schools, which is why those schools that want to get into the lucrative market of teaching IT all offer at least associates and sometimes bachelors degrees. They've jumped through the accreditation hoops, but don't expect to know as much coming out of one of them, even if you apply yourself completely, as you would with a bachelors from Rice or Brown or Stanford or MIT. It's just not going to happen.
the college system is stuck in the past and the push for all to got is dumbing it down and hurting the tech / trades schools as well.
WTH?
Sorry, but how is the recent suckage of colleges and universities hurting the people with HVAC, Diesel, Plumbing, Electrician, etc. training from Wyotech again?
The retail box version of 2010 is US$499; add the 10% Australian GST and the 5% Duty on the license, and that gets you to US$575, not including the shipping cost + 10% GST on the shipping cost, which could, combines get you up that high.
I was unable to find a boxed retail version of 2013 list price online; I guess I could look next time I was at an office store or Fry's, and see what price they have crossed out to show me what I'm saving.
Before the general technology agreement, it was incredibly expensive to export software to Australia (I worked for several small software houses which jumped through the necessary hoops). This could be a leftover, but you should expect 15% higher for boxed copies just from your own taxes and duties down there.
What does Amazon charge you for the download version? I think they pretty much don't care where they ship.
I don't know about the laws in Italy (and I am not a lawyer anywhere) but that doesn't really matter as far as I know in the US. Look at the story of Traci Lords. She used fake ID to make porn when she was 16 and there was, at least at the time, no way the other people making it could tell it was fake (it wasn't that hard to do back then). They were still at least charged. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traci_Lords#Porn_career
All charges were dismissed against these men when it was revealed that the US Government had issued Traci Lords a US Passport indicating the false age under the name "Kristi Nussman". The US government had attested that she was above the age of consent at the time the films were made. This is somewhat similar to the Aaron Swartz case, at least in that government misconduct resulted in a crime.
The Traci Lords circus is a bad analogy for the case of the Italian girl, since, given that the girl could not legally enter into the license agreement with FB under Italian law, there was no contract. No contract = no case.
This is a case of grieving parents who are looking for someone to blame for their grief, and an Italian magistrate who is willing to be complicit in attempting to blame FB, nominally on behalf of the grieving parents, but probably with some political motivation. Politics in Italy are largely viewed by the rest of the world to be about grandstanding for publicity, and then riding the resulting wave into office. There have been many articles in US periodicals about this, the most (in)famous one being Ilona Staller's run for, and election to, parliament.
And yet the US is adamant in it's right to enforce it's laws on internet presences that are not based in the US because they are used by US citizens. You can't have it both ways.
I've seen commercial entities based in the US request via the USDOJ and other entities that other countries put pressure on internet presences not in the US in an attempt use US laws as a hammer.
I've seen the USDOJ and other entities become complicit in communicating the requests to other countries.
I've seen the governments and agencies thereof bend over for the US by complying with the request.
I've seen the internet presences bend over for their own government agencies.
But other than invading Nicaragua and kidnapping Manuel Noriega to put him on trial in the US, I haven't really seen the US enforcing US laws abroad. In fact, I've seen them keep GITMO open, despite campaign promises by three presidents, precisely so that they have a place controlled by the US military so they can store prisoners there and specifically NOT have to comply with US law.
The first two observations are the US' fault, at least in the general sense of "Blame the US for the actions of RIAA/MPAA/whoever, which is generally reviled by the average US citizen who cares one way or the other".
The last two observations are the fault of the target country and the internet presences in that target country having no backbones, and that's all on you.
They have evidence he broke the law on numerous occasions..
So... basically, like any civil disobedience act, like Brown v. Board of Education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education in which an existing and socially unconscionable law was disobeyed, ultimately leading to the end of segregation and the doctrine of "Separate But Equal", right?
A murderer being charged for multiple murders isn't a loophole.
A singular act should result in a singular charge. It's very common for prosecutors to "stack charges", not only so they can threaten consecutive service of penalties in order to coerce a confession, but also to ensure that they get a conviction, no patter what, even if it's for jaywalking near the murder scene of a murder that's eventually discovered to have been commited by someone else.
Who can afford to travel for 2-3 years without some sort of work? Most of us can afford to take a week or two off at most, not years. But if seeing the world were combined with a paying gig, long term could be more feasible.
The OP can.
You need to read what they said more carefully: "2-3 years or more depending on whether my software is successful"
In other words, they intend to work on a software project for themselves, and are not looking for a paying gig; they're just looking for a place to do work - a quiet place.
To answer their question, rather than your assumption: In general, there are no quiet places in the areas of cities which have hostels, and Internet cafes, or cafes in general, don't tend to be quiet. Unless a cafe is very high end - which is more or less incompatible with the need to stay in hostels rather than hotels - it's not going to be quiet in the same way that a hostel doesn't have a quiet "business center" (or decent soundproofing in your private room) like a hotel does.
The best bet is a library or some other quiet public place. A park might work, but if the intent is to do work when the weather is lousy, and explore and have fun other times, then we're back to the library.
No, but generally speaking you cannot enter a contract with a minor, which is probably the legal issue. Age of majority is variable, but in California that is 18 ys old.
They should find a way around it, but they can't just give it to him.
I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that simply paying someone a reward is not entering into a contract.
If Paypal requires that the person who finds the bug enters into a non-disclosure and/or marketing agreement (i.e. to be able to publish their name as the bug finder) prior to receiving the reward then I would agree that this may be the issue. However, there are tons of child actors in Hollywood, so their must be a way that a minor can enter into an agreement. I'm guessing that it would require the legal guardian(s) signature.
Contract was my first thought as well; the terms and conditions of the bounty program require entering into a licensing contract which includes publishing rights, a contract that warrants that the work is theirs, contracts for a waiver of additional claims, In addition, they reserve the right to change the rules at any time they feel like it, including after submission and prior to acceptance/payment of the bounty:
"The bug bounty program is subject to change or to cancellation at any point without notice."
See here for full details; the Terms and Conditions spelling out the contractual obligations on the submitter are at the bottom (as usual):
IMO, there are probably places you could sell information about such exploits that would be more likely to guarantee payment. On the plus side, since they've used the age of majority as a gate in this particular case, he can now pursue sales through those other venues.
There's a special place in hell for people with such ideas.
Fredrick, Maryland is a place in hell?
Seriously, we've been war-gaming this scenario since at least 1958, if not earlier. The Biological Weapons Convention was signed in 1972, as an addendum to the Geneva Convention. See:
Um so all that ecumenical negotiation between Catholics and protestants count for nothing?
Pretty much, yeah; unless they agree to join their churches into a single faith, it's the religious equivalent of "saying 'nice doggy' until you can find a bigger stick".
I like the idea that he's spending his on advancing technology.
I love the idea of advancing tech, and it costs lots of money. Many worse uses for that money. What I'm skeptical of is that Google X is much more than a way to generate hype (which Google and Silicon Valley in general thrives on) and/or Sergei being a dilettante. The endless announcements of seriously not-ready-for-prime-time stuff seem more like a way of generating hype, as serious projects are more kept under wraps. And many of the things they work on seem "cool" more than part of any coherent business strategy or research approach.
I think that Sergei is in the same situation as Elon Musk, in that he really doesn't have to give a damn about whether or not he's spending on something that makes up part of a coherent whole, rather than an individual new business, and he really doesn't have to give a damn about whether or not it's going to make a viable self-sustaining business in 5 years or 10 years.
He has enough money to take the long view.
Technically, governments also have enough money to take the long view, but other than specific one-off projects at ITER, NILS, LHC, and similarly rare "big physics" projects, governments tend to take the "bread and circuses" approach, and time the preliminary results to the next election cycle. As a senator or congressman, you can pretty much milk any "big, hopeful project which never gets far enough along to cost Real Money(tm)" for 3 or 4 election cycles, if you are good at planning things out. So governments take a "pretend long view", unless the end goal is something military.
Nor are they deep research of the sort that Bell Labs used to do. Maybe Sergei thinks he's running the commercial version of DARPA, but he doesn't single-handedly control the company.
I think he views it more like Edison's workshop, not Bell Labs, and not DARPA, or he'd be laser-focussed on some of the projects I mentioned, and a half dozen or so others I didn't, plus his own less-obvious list of a dozen or so which he'd rather keep quiet.
Technically, he controls a large chunk of the company, but doing that doesn't mean that if he was frozen out of company decisions that his existing pool of money isn't self-sustaining, in large part, and that he's not getting large dividends. But he's really not in a lot of danger of being ousted, as long as he's doing his thing, and Larry and Eric are funding their asteroid mining venture. He's likely to get cut a fair bit of slack.
You may also remember that the Goodle RSUs ("GSUs") and ISOs are now done in non-voting stock, so it's unlikely that they would lose control of their company that way, either -- which was kind of the whole point of switching from issuing voting stock to non-voting stock in the first place. See here for details on the change-over: http://www.thespec.com/news-story/2240618-google-to-issue-non-voting-stock/
I suspect that when the hype and gee golly value of these projects dies out, so will the funding.
I suspect that IF the "hype and gee golly" ever dies out, Sergei will still have more money than God, and will still be able to do whatever the hell he likes, regardless of whether or not it results in hype.
Well, I doubt if even Sergei is wealthy enough to commercialize a new fission technology given the tremendous obstacles.
Fission technology is similar to the situation on patents in rocket technology, like linear aerospike engines, and the other patents which keep someone from rolling out a DC-X style spacecraft in the next couple of years: these things only matter if you do the work in the US or an allied country.
There's practically nothing to prevent Sergei from spending his money outside the US rather than inside, in order to work around issues like this. International borders are relatively porous to money, particularly if you have a huge amount of it.
Makani Power will become part of Google X – the secretive research and development arm of the search giant
Google X is Sergei's play thing. Maybe he has an inferiority complex from taking second place in a science fair, or it's just that billionaire's can afford cool hobbies. I know I'm being a wet blanket, but this seems very tenuously related to anything Google is involved in. I think it's fascinating tech, but I'm skeptical that Google X is a real industrial research lab as opposed to a cool hobby and a good way to get more of what Google thrives on: hype.
If you were ridiculously wealthy, what would you spend your money on?
I like the idea that he's spending his on advancing technology. I'd probably be aimed more at biotech and nanotechnology - about the only realistic chances to buy yourself a longer life expectancy, which would let you spend even more money on cool stuff - than wind generators, but I like that he's spending on wearable computing and space elevators and fuel cells.
If he wanted to solve the power issues, he'd be probably better off working on Thorium reactors than wind generation, given that one of the Diablo Canyon reactors puts out more energy than if all the windmills in California were simultaneously operating at 100% capacity, but for all I know he's building one somewhere, or there are anti-nuclear regulatory issues standing in the way.
He could do something stupid, like buy RVs for all the homeless people in San Francisco, but generally, you can't possibly hope to fix people one at a time, and concentrating on getting to the point where you can help everyone is probably the best use of his resources, if what he's trying to do is something to improve the general state of the world.
Not quite sure why hiring from a heterodox offshoot that both the catholic protestant church consider a heretical cult and in the recent past was involved in armed insurrection against the state is a good idea for sensitive posts.
The Catholics and Protestants believe each other to be heterodox relative to each other. It's difficult to classify the LDS church as a cult, as they have survived more than a generation past the death of their charismatic leader, without also classifying any follower of a faith that at one point had a charismatic leader as a cult. No idea what you are talking about on the armed insurrection comment, so I'll say "citation needed".
You should also consider that the vast majority of the US military is recruited from "red states", and three letter agencies also tend to recruit from ex military.
I generally don't believe that respect for authority is always a good thing, But couple that with an abstinence from drugs, alcohol, and in the more devout, even caffeine done for religious reasons, along with foreign language skills from foreign missions on behalf of the LDS church, also for religious reasons, and you'd have a hard time coming up with a better recruiting pool for three letter government agencies.
The people doing the hiring probably did something stupid as kids or in college, and given a few years, the kids doing job searches now will b hiring managers and HR people and the system will learn to adapt and what to ignore and what to take seriously...everybody fucks up once in a while but we just put our dirty laundry on youtube now.
A more likely outcome is that upper echelon positions would be recruited from socially conservative groups who are not only socially conservative in public, but also socially conservative in private.
These could be ex-employees or early retirement employees of agencies known for strongly vetting their employees backgrounds. For example, there's a reason that the CIA and FBI tend to disproportionately recruit from socially conservative groups like the LDS church. The primary reason for this is they don't want anything in their employees past that the agency or the employees family doesn't already know about being potentially used as leverage and.or blackmail material which could then be used to compromise the agency.
After the scandals of prior years, it's no error that Sharlene Wells was crowned Miss America in 1985 to have at least term of someone socially conservative enough to avoid causing a new scandal before the pageant repaired its ailing reputation from the Vanessa Williams scandal of 1984. They wanted a "Good Mormon Girl" who wouldn't make waves.
Make a mistake as a teen, and you could find yourself barred from the upper reached of money-based power, especially if you compound the mistake by recording it in publicly visible social media.
No such condition can result in obesity. All they affect is feeling of hunger. Ie, it's somewhat harder to control yourself but it physically can't make you fat.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still on the fence whether the idea that use of lethal force in self defense in such situations is really a natural born right. Yeah, you have right to defend yourself, but that I'm not really sure that this right, ethically, automatically implies the right to manslaughter. Aren't there plenty of non-lethal ways of incapacitating intruders that are just as easy to use as a gun would be? Why the heck are people so eager to kill others?
I think it comes down to the argument of "shoot me, or I will shoot you/your loved one". It's totally wrong to kill another human being under any circumstances. Someone who has placed me in that situation, however, has just defined themselves as no longer a human being, because a human being would never put another human being in that situation in the first place.
When you believe your life is in danger, or you believe someone else's life is in danger, it's moral to use deadly force in defense of the person in harms way.
This is why "suicide by cop" is even in our vocabulary in the first place. It's also why an officer involved shooting that is determined to be under those circumstances carries no professional stigma against the officer, and the officer suffers neither discipline nor snactions, other than mandatory counseling. If it's any consolation, if you were to shoot someone invading your baby daughters bedroom through the window, I'd recommend counseling for you too, even though I'd call it a justifiable homicide and acquit you of criminal charges.
Here is the court order:
https://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/052413-eff.pdf
One possible "response" they could provide is "piss off".
You'll also note the Rule 7(i) Security Clearance information proviso for the EFF counsel; so even if they get to see the information, it doesn't meant that you get to see the information, or that they can subsequently re-disclose.
Car:
A woman is crossing a dark parking lot at night; she sees someone in a hoodie on the other side of the parking lot. The person in the hoodie obviously notices her with a predatory pause and tarts moving towards her Her car is between them. She runs for the car, the bad guy starts running towards her. She gets in RFID range; the car notices the keys in her purse. She reaches the drivers side of her car just as the bad guy reaches the passengers side. She opens the door because the RFID has authorized it. The bad guy opens the passenger door, because the RFID has authorized it.
Isn't she happy she had the RFID?
Gun:
You get into your house. You hear a crash from the bedroom. You run to investigate. A burglar has just successfully opened your gun case. He tries to shoot you; the gun fails to go off. You rush over. You struggle. You get in RFID range. The gun goes off during the struggle, and you're shot.
Aren't you glad you had the RFID?
Conspiracy bits aside, if the FBI found something, why would they demand he open the gates to more?
Could they not simply prosecute him based on just what they have so far? That way there would be no 5th Amendment violation, and they would (should?) have sufficient evidence so far to successfully prosecute him anyway.
[ Realize up front that I think people like they are accusing the defendant of being should probably burn, not in Hell, but in the here and now ... ]
I imagine it's to set a precedent.
If the demand is not successfully defended against, they are more likely to be granted a future order without expending "considerable resources". The next time, they will be able to argue "we could expend considerable resources and crack this drive too, but since it's going to be decrypted one way or the other, you might as well have him hand over the keys now". It's a really thin wedge, given that the FBI claiming someone owns a drive when they don't claim ownership, so 5th amendment considerations would likely still attach, but they might be able to find an agreeable judge to push the precedent a little further.
Using the sparing sector list as part of the key might confound decryption, if the encryption is drive level rather than all in user space where it could be fed a false set of sparing sectors, so it's possible that future SanDisk products (among other SSD vendors) might be immune from use of forensic copies.
I think though, that 5th amendment issues might still attach, if they can't demonstrate that he actually has the keys. It'll be interesting to see if the defense tries to play it that way, and what results, if any, come from that angle.
The "it's manufactured data" angle would also be interesting, since presumably they could have obtained pictures and financial data from other sources to make it appear that way. Given that the FBI has "considerable resources" to expend on this type of thing, it's not that unreasonable to ask how those resources were expended: decrypting the drive, or manufacturing evidence which can only be disproven if the drive is decrypted with the keys he may or may not have in his possession, since if it's manufactured, it might still not be his drive.
I'm glad the court ruled against the forced decryption initially, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out, and whether the FBI gets their wedge, and if so, they are successful in using it to leverage further erosions of 5th amendment in a future case, or not.
How is blocking ad revenue from sites distributing content without the appropriate license "too much censorship"? It's the correct approach. Or would you argue you should be free to profit from the operation of planes, trains, or automobiles ( or truck) without an the appropriate license?
Pilots licenses were not mandatory in the US until 1917, following a Massachusetts state law in 1913, so for planes, at least, the answer was "yes", for 10 years.
For trains, it's controlled by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, which is a division of the teamsters union, and it's handled through an apprenticeship program, starting with conductor, then brakeman, ... all the way to engineer. The first railroad, the B&O (Baltimore and Ohio) was opened in 1830, and it wasn't until the 1880's that certification was enforced (after the strikes against the railroads and the Pullman Palace Car Company). Certification was adopted as a defensive reaction to the Pinkertons hired to put down the strikes (violently, with man deaths), since it meant that non-union "scabs" might be brought in, but they would still not be able to legally operate the trains. So for 50 years, the answer for trains was "yes".
Automobile licenses were not required from 1886, when Benz created the first internal combustion engine, until 1888; this was mostly because the people of Mannheim complained about the noise and smell, and the license was technically from the Dutchy, and not actually a license. In North America, there were state laws in 1910 (New York) and 1913 (New Jersey - the first state to require passing a test). So in the US, the answer was "yes", for over 20 years.
So, licenses serve two purposes: (1) prevent other people from entering the field, so as to raise the relative value of the labor allowed to operate in the field, and ensure collective bargaining power for those allowed to participate, and (2) as a revenue mechanism for the state.
The public safety argument is relatively moot, as raising the speed limit from 55 back to it's pre-Jan 2nd 1972 limits (or higher in some areas) has demonstrated (the limit was imposed due to the "energy crisis" at the time, not for public safety, and kept because it was a pretty nice cash cow for a lot of local governments). Highway deaths are inversely proportional to the effectiveness of vehicle safety systems, and not speed limit.
Practically speaking, you're better off letting people get into accidents, and then penalizing them after the fact for causing the accident. Several studies on red light cameras have demonstrated this, since people see a yellow light and slam on their brakes to avoid a red light camera ticket -- which in California can not be appealed unless you can demonstrate that the yellow light at the intersection in question lasts less than 4.8 seconds. This because some municipalities were speeding up the yellow lights to increase red light camera ticket revenue.
So yeah, there's a lot of things you should be able to do without a license, like operating a hot dog cart, for which licenses are required, but actually do nothing.
I'm reminded of when my driver's license was stolen; I went to the DMV to get them to reissue a new on, and asked for a different number. They wouldn't give me one, even with a police report, until I squawked up to a supervisor. It's the same number with a 'B". But considered in retrospect, did their issuing the new number and invalidating the old one stop the thief from using the license as identification? No. They got someone who looked like me to place a mail hold at the post office, with the intent of picking up my mail, including credit card and other statements, as well as credit card issued based on identity theft at a later date. I missed getting my mail two days in a row when I was expecting a letter, which is how I found out. The point of this story is that a driver's license does nothing for me, including legally identify me, unless the
Semyon Grigoryev is director at the NEFU Museum of Mammoths, not a molecular biologist. The DNA was recovered by a Japanese colleague. So yeah, it's possible he knows more. I think I know more, but I'm on the record as predicting the premature senescence of Dolly the sheep to NBC News the days of the announcement that it had been cloned.
FWIW: This particular discovery is a repeat of one in 2012, and an earlier one in 2011, so the guy is pretty good at finding mammoth corpses. This repeats every several years:
2012: http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Semyon-Grigoryev/1842435513
2011: http://web.archive.org/web/20111207223335/http://news.discovery.com/animals/woolly-mammoth-cloned-111205.html
This isn't to detract from Semyon Grigoryev (although I wish he had his credentials published online somewhere Google could find them), since it's pretty obvious that when he goes out to find mammoths or mammoth parts, he finds them.
It's somewhat reasonable to be worried ... if you are an investor. No one else should much care. So ignore all the journalists who are not business/financial in nature.
Historically, Apple has an approximately 6 month announcement cycle which corresponds to biannual major public events, one for developers in the fall, and one for everyone else in the spring. At these events, it alternately announces its new desktop/laptop hardware, and then its new iDevices.
This is one of the few times they've missed their spring announcement in almost a decade; the last time was when Tiger slipped shipping for over six months, and that coincided with a claim of a new 18 month development cycle which lasted only one release cycle. This was actually occasioned by some major management screw-ups internally, coinciding with the first major drop-off in Steve's health.
Apple has been pretty religious about keeping to this schedule, even through the power shift in 2008/2009 when the taller Oompa Loompsa realized they were more or less in charge of the steering wheel of the chocolate factory, should they want to fight each other to steer.
The iPhone 5 was more or less a fizzle. They're selling OK, but the difference in aspect ratio, made for economic rather than design reasons, combined with the maps change and other changes resulting from non-renewal of contracts with third party vendors, including Google, made it probably the worst launch for an iDevice and an iOS release in Apple history. Technologically, they are a step away from design being the goal in a design/cost tradeoff, and a step backwards in system software.
Mountain Lion sold well, but only because they dropped the upgrade price to practically nothing. It was a more or less bug fix release for things that should have never been released in Lion in the first place, and the "Game Center" was a non-feature (no games), and the "Message Center" was moving iOS features into a desktop OS, which makes sense for some of them, but when Facebook integration failed to materialize, even in updates, it's potential utility went down.
It's pretty clear I called the code on the patient way too early myself, but given that it's hovering at around 60% of its high of about 8 months ago, I'd say it was a matter of "when" not "if" the product pipeline would be drying up.
talking about the IT trade / tech schools / people who learn on there own / all the IT boot camps / ECT.
The first two aren't going to get you an interview at Google, Apple, IBM, Facebook, Twitter, Oracle, or a bunch of other companies. You will probably not land an interview in the top 50 most desirable places to work, based on those credentials alone.
The third one wont land you the interview at all.
The fourth one is pretty meaningless in terms of you actually knowing anything; if you pay your $, you will walk away with the participation certificate; teaching you anything is ancillary to the extraction of the money from your wallet.
If you have experience, with the first three you might crack into an interview in the bottom half of the top 50. Call it 10 years of experience, working for a small or medium size company where you were not one of the founders or one of their relatives, and where the company actually has a reputation other than "never heard of it". Bonus points if it was sold in an acquisition, and part of your experience is them keeping you on after the acquisition.
The third one, being an autodidact, will be more likely to actually get you past the interview and into a job. For example, if you've read all of Knuth's books, and can identify the "big O" notation of various algorithms, and apply them to problems. Bonus for having read and memorized the additional algorithms in Robert Sedgewick's Algorithms in C++ book, particularly the ones related to graph theory.
IT bootcamps and certifications get you nowhere; they make you look like an idiot who thinks that those things are actually useful to anyone other than the company selling them. An MSCE will generally get you negative points with most IT shops these days. Exceptions: Cisco certification gets you points, Oracle certification gets you points - it's possible to fail either of these, and if you do, you don't get the certification, no matter how much money you throw at them. But in the end, all it means is that you're pretty good at memorizing technical manuals, which is a useful skill, but not sufficient to land you a job.
Here are the end-runs around all of this:
(1) Start a famous Open Source project. The company that wants to control the project, or fund it because they use it, but is enlightened enough to let you keep editorial control, will find you: no interview needed.
(2) Be a significant contributor to an Open Source project. Linux commit privileges are a plus; being an area editor like Ingo Molnar, or in a particular vertical stack, like the input event system, the startup event process, the USB stack, or the networking stack is the biggest plus you can get.
(3) Be a manager somewhere, and work your way into the technology industry; this won't get you a top-tier company job, but could land you in the bottom 1/3 of the top 50. The top tiers all get their managers by (A) promoting from within, or (B) acquiring a company where the person was already a manager; Google works this way, Apple works this way. IBM and Novell work by you being a manager somewhere else, and working your way up a management track. IBM sometimes works like Google and Apple, but without real academic credentials, preferrably post graduate, don't expect that you can be a manager at Almaden or T.J. Watson research, etc., unless you have been a manager at IBM about 15 years and worked your way past the level where you deal with technical issues.
IT jobs are not like plumbing; you don't go in with some aptitude, get apprenticed, become a journeyman, and work your way up to master. IT jobs are not things you lean to do at trade/tech schools, which is why those schools that want to get into the lucrative market of teaching IT all offer at least associates and sometimes bachelors degrees. They've jumped through the accreditation hoops, but don't expect to know as much coming out of one of them, even if you apply yourself completely, as you would with a bachelors from Rice or Brown or Stanford or MIT. It's just not going to happen.
the college system is stuck in the past and the push for all to got is dumbing it down and hurting the tech / trades schools as well.
WTH?
Sorry, but how is the recent suckage of colleges and universities hurting the people with HVAC, Diesel, Plumbing, Electrician, etc. training from Wyotech again?
How are these things even comparable?
Are you maybe comparing 2010 to 2013?
The retail box version of 2010 is US$499; add the 10% Australian GST and the 5% Duty on the license, and that gets you to US$575, not including the shipping cost + 10% GST on the shipping cost, which could, combines get you up that high.
http://web.ita.doc.gov/ITI/itiHome.nsf/9b2cb14bda00318585256cc40068ca69/c321b1b57a1a598985256d010070bf9e?OpenDocument
I was unable to find a boxed retail version of 2013 list price online; I guess I could look next time I was at an office store or Fry's, and see what price they have crossed out to show me what I'm saving.
Before the general technology agreement, it was incredibly expensive to export software to Australia (I worked for several small software houses which jumped through the necessary hoops). This could be a leftover, but you should expect 15% higher for boxed copies just from your own taxes and duties down there.
What does Amazon charge you for the download version? I think they pretty much don't care where they ship.
I don't know about the laws in Italy (and I am not a lawyer anywhere) but that doesn't really matter as far as I know in the US. Look at the story of Traci Lords. She used fake ID to make porn when she was 16 and there was, at least at the time, no way the other people making it could tell it was fake (it wasn't that hard to do back then). They were still at least charged. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traci_Lords#Porn_career
All charges were dismissed against these men when it was revealed that the US Government had issued Traci Lords a US Passport indicating the false age under the name "Kristi Nussman". The US government had attested that she was above the age of consent at the time the films were made. This is somewhat similar to the Aaron Swartz case, at least in that government misconduct resulted in a crime.
The Traci Lords circus is a bad analogy for the case of the Italian girl, since, given that the girl could not legally enter into the license agreement with FB under Italian law, there was no contract. No contract = no case.
This is a case of grieving parents who are looking for someone to blame for their grief, and an Italian magistrate who is willing to be complicit in attempting to blame FB, nominally on behalf of the grieving parents, but probably with some political motivation. Politics in Italy are largely viewed by the rest of the world to be about grandstanding for publicity, and then riding the resulting wave into office. There have been many articles in US periodicals about this, the most (in)famous one being Ilona Staller's run for, and election to, parliament.
And yet the US is adamant in it's right to enforce it's laws on internet presences that are not based in the US because they are used by US citizens. You can't have it both ways.
I've seen commercial entities based in the US request via the USDOJ and other entities that other countries put pressure on internet presences not in the US in an attempt use US laws as a hammer.
I've seen the USDOJ and other entities become complicit in communicating the requests to other countries.
I've seen the governments and agencies thereof bend over for the US by complying with the request.
I've seen the internet presences bend over for their own government agencies.
But other than invading Nicaragua and kidnapping Manuel Noriega to put him on trial in the US, I haven't really seen the US enforcing US laws abroad. In fact, I've seen them keep GITMO open, despite campaign promises by three presidents, precisely so that they have a place controlled by the US military so they can store prisoners there and specifically NOT have to comply with US law.
The first two observations are the US' fault, at least in the general sense of "Blame the US for the actions of RIAA/MPAA/whoever, which is generally reviled by the average US citizen who cares one way or the other".
The last two observations are the fault of the target country and the internet presences in that target country having no backbones, and that's all on you.
They have evidence he broke the law on numerous occasions..
So... basically, like any civil disobedience act, like Brown v. Board of Education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education in which an existing and socially unconscionable law was disobeyed, ultimately leading to the end of segregation and the doctrine of "Separate But Equal", right?
A murderer being charged for multiple murders isn't a loophole.
A singular act should result in a singular charge. It's very common for prosecutors to "stack charges", not only so they can threaten consecutive service of penalties in order to coerce a confession, but also to ensure that they get a conviction, no patter what, even if it's for jaywalking near the murder scene of a murder that's eventually discovered to have been commited by someone else.
Who can afford to travel for 2-3 years without some sort of work? Most of us can afford to take a week or two off at most, not years. But if seeing the world were combined with a paying gig, long term could be more feasible.
The OP can.
You need to read what they said more carefully: "2-3 years or more depending on whether my software is successful"
In other words, they intend to work on a software project for themselves, and are not looking for a paying gig; they're just looking for a place to do work - a quiet place.
To answer their question, rather than your assumption: In general, there are no quiet places in the areas of cities which have hostels, and Internet cafes, or cafes in general, don't tend to be quiet. Unless a cafe is very high end - which is more or less incompatible with the need to stay in hostels rather than hotels - it's not going to be quiet in the same way that a hostel doesn't have a quiet "business center" (or decent soundproofing in your private room) like a hotel does.
The best bet is a library or some other quiet public place. A park might work, but if the intent is to do work when the weather is lousy, and explore and have fun other times, then we're back to the library.
Thing is... a lot of this is about performance. If they create, say, a fighter with the performance of the F-35, then it's a real problem.
Why? The last time I checked, we still have ~5,000 nuclear weapons, which is more than enough to deter any rational nation-state from attacking us.
The half-life of Pu-241 is 14 years. When were those 5,000 weapons built again?
No, but generally speaking you cannot enter a contract with a minor, which is probably the legal issue. Age of majority is variable, but in California that is 18 ys old.
They should find a way around it, but they can't just give it to him.
I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that simply paying someone a reward is not entering into a contract.
If Paypal requires that the person who finds the bug enters into a non-disclosure and/or marketing agreement (i.e. to be able to publish their name as the bug finder) prior to receiving the reward then I would agree that this may be the issue. However, there are tons of child actors in Hollywood, so their must be a way that a minor can enter into an agreement. I'm guessing that it would require the legal guardian(s) signature.
Contract was my first thought as well; the terms and conditions of the bounty program require entering into a licensing contract which includes publishing rights, a contract that warrants that the work is theirs, contracts for a waiver of additional claims, In addition, they reserve the right to change the rules at any time they feel like it, including after submission and prior to acceptance/payment of the bounty:
"The bug bounty program is subject to change or to cancellation at any point without notice."
See here for full details; the Terms and Conditions spelling out the contractual obligations on the submitter are at the bottom (as usual):
https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/security/reporting-security-issues
IMO, there are probably places you could sell information about such exploits that would be more likely to guarantee payment. On the plus side, since they've used the age of majority as a gate in this particular case, he can now pursue sales through those other venues.
*balls of disapproval*
There's a special place in hell for people with such ideas.
Fredrick, Maryland is a place in hell?
Seriously, we've been war-gaming this scenario since at least 1958, if not earlier. The Biological Weapons Convention was signed in 1972, as an addendum to the Geneva Convention. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_Weapons_Convention
The problem with DNA targeted bioweapons: evolution. When the organisms run out of targeted DNA they evolve to target other DNA patterns.
We won't tell the bioweapons they're running out until it's too late. Pass it on.
Um so all that ecumenical negotiation between Catholics and protestants count for nothing?
Pretty much, yeah; unless they agree to join their churches into a single faith, it's the religious equivalent of "saying 'nice doggy' until you can find a bigger stick".
I like the idea that he's spending his on advancing technology.
I love the idea of advancing tech, and it costs lots of money. Many worse uses for that money. What I'm skeptical of is that Google X is much more than a way to generate hype (which Google and Silicon Valley in general thrives on) and/or Sergei being a dilettante. The endless announcements of seriously not-ready-for-prime-time stuff seem more like a way of generating hype, as serious projects are more kept under wraps. And many of the things they work on seem "cool" more than part of any coherent business strategy or research approach.
I think that Sergei is in the same situation as Elon Musk, in that he really doesn't have to give a damn about whether or not he's spending on something that makes up part of a coherent whole, rather than an individual new business, and he really doesn't have to give a damn about whether or not it's going to make a viable self-sustaining business in 5 years or 10 years.
He has enough money to take the long view.
Technically, governments also have enough money to take the long view, but other than specific one-off projects at ITER, NILS, LHC, and similarly rare "big physics" projects, governments tend to take the "bread and circuses" approach, and time the preliminary results to the next election cycle. As a senator or congressman, you can pretty much milk any "big, hopeful project which never gets far enough along to cost Real Money(tm)" for 3 or 4 election cycles, if you are good at planning things out. So governments take a "pretend long view", unless the end goal is something military.
Nor are they deep research of the sort that Bell Labs used to do. Maybe Sergei thinks he's running the commercial version of DARPA, but he doesn't single-handedly control the company.
I think he views it more like Edison's workshop, not Bell Labs, and not DARPA, or he'd be laser-focussed on some of the projects I mentioned, and a half dozen or so others I didn't, plus his own less-obvious list of a dozen or so which he'd rather keep quiet.
Technically, he controls a large chunk of the company, but doing that doesn't mean that if he was frozen out of company decisions that his existing pool of money isn't self-sustaining, in large part, and that he's not getting large dividends. But he's really not in a lot of danger of being ousted, as long as he's doing his thing, and Larry and Eric are funding their asteroid mining venture. He's likely to get cut a fair bit of slack.
You may also remember that the Goodle RSUs ("GSUs") and ISOs are now done in non-voting stock, so it's unlikely that they would lose control of their company that way, either -- which was kind of the whole point of switching from issuing voting stock to non-voting stock in the first place. See here for details on the change-over: http://www.thespec.com/news-story/2240618-google-to-issue-non-voting-stock/
I suspect that when the hype and gee golly value of these projects dies out, so will the funding.
I suspect that IF the "hype and gee golly" ever dies out, Sergei will still have more money than God, and will still be able to do whatever the hell he likes, regardless of whether or not it results in hype.
Well, I doubt if even Sergei is wealthy enough to commercialize a new fission technology given the tremendous obstacles.
Fission technology is similar to the situation on patents in rocket technology, like linear aerospike engines, and the other patents which keep someone from rolling out a DC-X style spacecraft in the next couple of years: these things only matter if you do the work in the US or an allied country.
There's practically nothing to prevent Sergei from spending his money outside the US rather than inside, in order to work around issues like this. International borders are relatively porous to money, particularly if you have a huge amount of it.
Makani Power will become part of Google X – the secretive research and development arm of the search giant
Google X is Sergei's play thing. Maybe he has an inferiority complex from taking second place in a science fair, or it's just that billionaire's can afford cool hobbies. I know I'm being a wet blanket, but this seems very tenuously related to anything Google is involved in. I think it's fascinating tech, but I'm skeptical that Google X is a real industrial research lab as opposed to a cool hobby and a good way to get more of what Google thrives on: hype.
If you were ridiculously wealthy, what would you spend your money on?
I like the idea that he's spending his on advancing technology. I'd probably be aimed more at biotech and nanotechnology - about the only realistic chances to buy yourself a longer life expectancy, which would let you spend even more money on cool stuff - than wind generators, but I like that he's spending on wearable computing and space elevators and fuel cells.
If he wanted to solve the power issues, he'd be probably better off working on Thorium reactors than wind generation, given that one of the Diablo Canyon reactors puts out more energy than if all the windmills in California were simultaneously operating at 100% capacity, but for all I know he's building one somewhere, or there are anti-nuclear regulatory issues standing in the way.
He could do something stupid, like buy RVs for all the homeless people in San Francisco, but generally, you can't possibly hope to fix people one at a time, and concentrating on getting to the point where you can help everyone is probably the best use of his resources, if what he's trying to do is something to improve the general state of the world.
Not quite sure why hiring from a heterodox offshoot that both the catholic protestant church consider a heretical cult and in the recent past was involved in armed insurrection against the state is a good idea for sensitive posts.
The Catholics and Protestants believe each other to be heterodox relative to each other. It's difficult to classify the LDS church as a cult, as they have survived more than a generation past the death of their charismatic leader, without also classifying any follower of a faith that at one point had a charismatic leader as a cult. No idea what you are talking about on the armed insurrection comment, so I'll say "citation needed".
http://www.mormonthink.com/QUOTES/gov.htm
http://www.businessinsider.com/11-surprising-things-you-didnt-know-about-mormons-2011-6?op=1
You should also consider that the vast majority of the US military is recruited from "red states", and three letter agencies also tend to recruit from ex military.
I generally don't believe that respect for authority is always a good thing, But couple that with an abstinence from drugs, alcohol, and in the more devout, even caffeine done for religious reasons, along with foreign language skills from foreign missions on behalf of the LDS church, also for religious reasons, and you'd have a hard time coming up with a better recruiting pool for three letter government agencies.
The people doing the hiring probably did something stupid as kids or in college, and given a few years, the kids doing job searches now will b hiring managers and HR people and the system will learn to adapt and what to ignore and what to take seriously...everybody fucks up once in a while but we just put our dirty laundry on youtube now.
A more likely outcome is that upper echelon positions would be recruited from socially conservative groups who are not only socially conservative in public, but also socially conservative in private.
These could be ex-employees or early retirement employees of agencies known for strongly vetting their employees backgrounds. For example, there's a reason that the CIA and FBI tend to disproportionately recruit from socially conservative groups like the LDS church. The primary reason for this is they don't want anything in their employees past that the agency or the employees family doesn't already know about being potentially used as leverage and.or blackmail material which could then be used to compromise the agency.
After the scandals of prior years, it's no error that Sharlene Wells was crowned Miss America in 1985 to have at least term of someone socially conservative enough to avoid causing a new scandal before the pageant repaired its ailing reputation from the Vanessa Williams scandal of 1984. They wanted a "Good Mormon Girl" who wouldn't make waves.
Make a mistake as a teen, and you could find yourself barred from the upper reached of money-based power, especially if you compound the mistake by recording it in publicly visible social media.
No such condition can result in obesity. All they affect is feeling of hunger. Ie, it's somewhat harder to control yourself but it physically can't make you fat.
Sorry, but you're wrong:
Prednisolone: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMHT0011824/?report=details#side_effects ...Rapid weight gain ...Swelling in your hands, ankles, or feet ...Gaining weight around your neck, upper back, breast, face, or waist ...Increased appetite ...Unusually full or round face
Possible side effects:
Methylprednisolone: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMHT0011173/?report=details#side_effects ...Swelling in your hands, ankles, or feet, rapid weight gain ...Weight gain, increased hair growth, roundness or swelling of your face, thinning skin.
Possible side effects:
Synthetic corticosteroids cause weight gain, pretty much "period".