Depends. Al Capone was convicted on tax evasion. Are you saying his calls should or should not have been more closely monitored than any other tax evader?
This may shock you, but when the Feds put Al Capone away for tax evasion, they had a pretty good idea that he was the head of a large criminal enterprise. Maybe you're too young to have seen "The Untouchables".
It doesn't surprise me at all.
You have once again failed to answer my question. So I will rephrase it.
(1) Should the feds have placed the same scrutiny on Al Capones phone calls, based on his conviction for tax evasion, as they would for any other tax evader, OR (2) Should the feds have placed *more* scrutiny on Al Capone alone, thus violating the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment
Pick one.
1: What is the purpose of monitoring the phone calls of someone who has been convicted of selling five ounces of weed?
It prevents someone in the same cell block from using them as a covert channel in order to avoid monitoring their own communications. In other words, their unmonitored communications can not be utilized to avoid the monitoring of other people whose communications *MUST* be monitored, due to the heinousness of their crimes.
Or someone who has been convicted of a DUI?
It prevents someone in the same cell block from using them as a covert channel in order to avoid monitoring their own communications. In other words, their unmonitored communications can not be utilized to avoid the monitoring of other people whose communications *MUST* be monitored, due to the heinousness of their crimes.
They may have also been convicted of the DUI, while the authorities had a pretty good idea that they were the head of a large criminal enterprise. In order to avoid a violation of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment, they must monitor everyone not specifically convicted equally.
Do you think he might be operating an ongoing criminal enterprise of drunk drivers?
It's a low probability scenario.
In addition to the reasons already cited, he might have a better lawyer purchased for him by someone operating an ongoing criminal enterprise engaged in human trafficking (as an example) in exchange for his services in passing messages in order to enable *them* to continue to operate a criminal enterprise.
Just because P1 (prisoner one) can't talk directly to C1 (Criminal organization one), doesn't mean that they would not be able to tale to P2 and have them talk to C1 on their behalf. If we only monitored P1's communication, you are suggesting that:
That's just stupid, since you can't monitor communications between prisoners... you can't wire-tap people (yet).
2: I'm surprised that you're not more ashamed of promoting government's failed policies just so a family member can keep a government job.
YOU are the government. You don't seem to be getting this part of how it works. If you want to stop continuation of failed governmental policies, then damn well vote in people who will discontinue them, and quit bitching about the status quo. Bitching will not change the status quo. Putting different people in charge *will*.
I'm not *promoting* their policies for any reason, particularly not to protect a job.
I'm saying that the idea that laws derived from governmental policy -- as all laws are -- should be equally enforced.
This is *entirely* disjoint from the discussion on the methods of enforcement.
I would, for example, be willing to state that monitoring *only* the communications of convicted leaders of criminal enterprises, if *you* were willing to have it made impossible for them to communicate with any other prisoners.
Personally, I do not think placing all prisoners in solitary confinement is a workable strategy.
If the americans had wanted to end the war, they simply could have dropped the bombs in 10km hight, or in 10 km distance over the sea, or in an actual war zone on soldiers.
This is frequently claimed; however, there's really no evidence to support the claim -- which is why, I suppose, you prefaced it by calling it cynical.
The Emperor was being "managed" by the upper level military hierarchy in Japan, at the time, and it was necessary to sway popular opinion, such that the Emperor would be in a position to demand that Japan sue for peace, over top of this "management", without being assassinated. Short of civilian casualties, it's unlikely that anything else would have accomplished that.
The second bomb drop was necessary because they believed we did not have more than one device. Which is why they did not sue for peace after the first bomb was dropped, since they were able to utilize this argument to manage public opinion. Two provided the public fear that we might have N of them (we were working on material for more, but this was a bluff on our part). At which time peace broke out.
If anything, we really screwed the Emperor, who was our ally in a desire for peace, in all but public acknowledgement, by insisting that he be removed from power, rather than leaving the governmental structures more or less intact, and beheading the military (figuratively speaking).
To prevent someone from continuing to operate a criminal enterprise from behind bars. To prevent them from arranging smuggling of contraband.
What kind of "continuing criminal enterprise" is a guy who's been convicted of a DUI going to operate?
Depends. Al Capone was convicted on tax evasion. Are you saying his calls should or should not have been more closely monitored than any other tax evader?
The justice system has already identified the criminal bosses, but they're monitoring the calls of everyone who is incarcerated.
Yes. They are. The prisoners lost the right to private phone calls through due process of law. It doesn't matter what they are convicted of. It also guards against one prisoner using another prisoner to pass messages on their behalf.
I've had a non-collect call from a prisoner before. There was still an operator telling me who was calling, where they were calling from, and asking if I wanted to accept the call. I declined (it was a wrong number).
That's because the prisons are fiefdoms to hand out jobs to friends and family.
I pretty much have no idea in heck how what you just said relates to the statement to which you are replying. Are you claiming that, because the last kitchen worker hired at Lompoc was, say the nephew of the assistant warden's golf buddy, that the call I received was pre-screened by an operator who was totally unrelated, and whose job it was to prescreen calls?
The U.S. is also significantly more multicultural than Europe, being an almost entirely immigrant nation, and the recent (historically speaking) emphasis on multiculturalism and political correctness have led to a lot of cultural conflict that wasn't there before.
Fifty percent of the people in prison are there for drug violations, not because of "cultural conflict". In fact, the number of people in prison for "cultural conflict" is probably vanishingly small. But good try.
I'm ignoring the other 50%, as you did.
They were convicted of a criminal act, defined as breaking a legally enacted law, and being convicted by a jury of their peers of having broken that law, and then sentenced in accordance to (sometimes legally mandatory) sentencing guidelines.
As I said before: either work to change the law, or don't engage in the illegal activity, or don't get caught doing it.
Culture conflict is the basis of a lot of violence, and a lot of crime against persons. Almost every hate crime has its basis in a culture conflict, whether recent, or ongoing over hundreds of years. To the extent that you agree that there is such a thing as a "drug culture", then drug crimes are crimes due to culture conflict.
Warehousing the poor does not contribute to society. And are government jobs the only choice for your second cousin?
I agree that warehousing the poor does not contribute to society. However, you have completely failed to establish that prisons exist to warehouse the poor, or that laws are enacted to criminalize being poor. I'll agree to some correlation between being an addict and being poor, but I won't agree that there is a causation in one direction or the other (i.e. are they poor because they spend all their money on addictive drugs?, etc.).
And it doesn't *matter* what her job choices are, since you are basing your value judgement of her on your prejudices, and have not demonstrated that criminals do not need to be monitored, regardless of their crimes.
To prevent someone from continuing to operate a criminal enterprise from behind bars. To prevent them from arranging smuggling of contraband. To prevent them from arranging completion of the criminal activities that landed them in prison by third parties. To prevent them ordering hits. To prevent them from communicating to other suspects in an ongoing investigation that it's still ongoing. To prevent communication of attempts by law enforcement to obtain information regarding other criminals still at large.
In short, because bad guys are bad guys.
2. All calls involve a human operator asking the target of the call if they will accept the call.
You haven't made a collect call in a while, have you. "If you accept the charges, press 1" No human is needed.
I've had a non-collect call from a prisoner before. There was still an operator telling me who was calling, where they were calling from, and asking if I wanted to accept the call. I declined (it was a wrong number).
However, even if it's a right number, you may not want to take the call. It could be for the purposes of ongoing harassment of a victim, of the type that landed the person in prison in the first place. It could be for the purposes of witness intimidation. It could be for the purpose of jury tampering in an ongoing criminal case. In most instances, when asked this question, you have the option of telling the operator that you do not want to receive such calls from this prisoner in the future -- or to blacklist your number for any prisoner from that facility.
3. As the number of phones goes up, the number of humans you have to hire to do this simultaneously goes up.
See 1 and 2.
And let's not forget that the prisons get kickback from the telcos when prisoners are overcharged for calls. And not just to "cover costs", either. They get a nice bowl of gravy from the 2 or 3 companies that provide phones for prisoners.
I can't speak to the kickbacks (never having observed the practice). Your complaints against my points #1 and #2 do nothing to impeach my point #3.
Finally, this might be a worthwhile time to ask, "Why the FUCK are there so many people in prison in the US?" We have about 4% of the world's population and about 22% of the world's prisoners. Are Americans just a lot more likely to be prisoners? Are we prone to crime because we watched The Untouchables reruns on TV? Do we have a higher percentage of violent sociopaths or is it because keeping people locked up takes away their right to vote, and the people who are in power cannot stay in power if lots of people vote?
Many states allow prisoners to vote absentee. IMO, it shouldn't be allowed, but felony disenfranchisement is permitted under two of the amendments (the 5th and 14th, via the "due process" clauses in each of them), and it's more or less a states rights issue when enforcing state law as to what constitutes a disenfranchisable offense, under the law, for which a due process application can be made to the prisoner's voting rights.
As to why there are so many prisoners: they were convicted under the law by a jury of their peers. If you don't like this, work to change the law. Yes, a lot of them are drug related offenses which would not merit prison time in other countries. Just as abortion in the U.S. does not merit prison time, as it does in parts of Europe.
The U.S. is also significantly more multicultural than Europe, being an almost entirely immigrant nation, and the recent (historically speaking) emphasis on multiculturalism and political correctness have led to a lot of cultural conflict that wasn't there before.
What happens when you can't or such a design would be more difficult than a global shared time reference?
What happens when every system can't just stamp their own "idea of local time" on to an event when it occurs? What happens when every systems "idea of local time" changes over time?
Non-synchronized clocks are only a problem if you let them be a problem/make them a problem.
Obviously it is best to avoid dependencies which require synchronization where possible. Unfortunately it isn't always possible.
In those cases, use NTP. Or use direct tier one information from GPS or cell tower data (if you are OK with the +/- 1 second on the cell tower's idea of the time). Or set the device's idea of local time as part of the handshake establishing the connection with the server (although this last one wouldn't work for mesh networks not communicating with servers).
The problem with delta's as you describe is how you account for network latency in your delta. Its impossible to tell clock drift from network latency when syncing two clocks in this way.
That a fair ask, assuming an asymmetric latency.
The easy way to handle this is to also send along your delta calculation with your packet as well, so that the other end can compare its delta calculation with your delta calculation.
Another alternative is to include this information in the establishment of the connection, as part of the encryption startup and the authentication handshake which establishes the credentials authorizing the server operations by the client. Although that would not account for variable latency across connections with long durations, as carrying around the extra delta would.
They do when that is a sane thing to do. Sometimes a precise notion of time isn't important. But many activities are impossible without a rather precise determination of the time across multiple devices.
[...]
The only way to ensure the local time on your clock is correct is to synchronize with another clock. A clock providing arbitrary time stamps is worse than useless. In fact for many activities what you suggest would lead to accidents, fraud and all sorts of confusion.
Any time you have a measuring device where you care about its accuracy you have to compare it to a reference standard. That's why we have highly accurate atomic clocks maintained by standards organizations to calibrate our clocks to.
These are reasonable arguments for a UTC time. Which you can get by hitting a known HTTP server, which I've already pointed out.
These are not reasonable arguments for trying to do NTP from an IoT device, and they are not reasonable arguments for trying to do NTP for most applications.
I think the most ironic part is that they are willing to pay up to $15K for a bug + a white paper on the bug, but not willing to pay anything more, should you include patches that actually fix the bug.
You would think that a bug *fix* was the end goal.
I'm of two minds, as to why this is the case:
(1) They just don't get this whole "Open Source" thing yet, although they seem to be trying really, really hard
(2) The intent of the program is actually to get the white papers, rather than the bug fixes. That, in turn, has several possible motivations, but I think the most likely of those motivations are:
(2)(A) They want to find security people to hire through this program, and this is easier than evaluating the honesty of a resume, or trusting an interview process to discern between someone who can't do the job, someone who can do it (but probably won't), and someone who can and will do the job. In other words, it's a pretty cheap candidate qualification mechanism, compared to traditional HR processes in this regard (qualified candidate acquisition probably costs them many multiples of $15K per qualified candidate they find, since they have to put the unqualified ones through the same process to weed them out). If so, it's clever an innovative.
(2)(B) They want to obtain an insight into the correct mindset to use when approaching an exploit, so that they can quantify it, and teach it to other people. This would be a much more ambitious use of the data, since not a day goes by when there isn't some idiot wanting to "learn security" from the perspective of someone who can do a systems penetration posting on Slashdot (in fact, there was a new article on it on Slashdot today, not just an isolated idiot post). I'm pretty sure that they will fail in this regard, but I do have to wonder if there is government "cyber warfare" (finger quotes intentional) dollars underwriting this.
So I'm generally suspicious of the motivations and/or cluefullness of such a program, but hey, having a program at all is a step forward.
I'm not sure why they don't just switch to a Glock in.45. Cheap, durable, repairable, cost-effective, and very reliable.
Glock.45 is not an option. The primary problem with it is that it does not use NATO standard 9mm rounds. Rounds are standardized at 9mm so that ammunition can be shared among allies in a joint exercise or conflict scenario.
The call costs are proportional to staffing. This, in turn, is proportional to the number of phones available for prisoner use.
I have family members who are on the corrections side of things, rather than the prisoner side of things.
1. All calls must be monitored by a human. 2. All calls involve a human operator asking the target of the call if they will accept the call. 3. As the number of phones goes up, the number of humans you have to hire to do this simultaneously goes up.
So the immediate consequence of this will be a reduction in staffing, a reduction in the number of available phones for prisoners to use, and a reduction in the time windows during which the phones are allowed to be used by the prisoners. This will down-limit the overhead to the point that the 11 cents rate can cover those costs. I have a second cousin who's probably going to lose her job over it.
This does not seem to be a worthwhile decision, on behalf of the prisoners. It sounds more like a decision based on a false understanding of the circumstances involved in prison phone calls.
It's not like you couldn't include your idea of your local time (whatever it is) in your NFS requests, and then have the server take its idea of its local time, generate a delta, and apply that to all the timestamps that you are trying to set on a file. Or conversely, when you do a stat, the server could include its idea of the local time, the client could use that to generate a delta vs. its own idea of local time, and apply that delta to the time being reported up from the kernel to user space.
The whole idea of having to synchronize clocks between machines is rather moronic. When you have a billion mechanical computers wandering around in your body with robot bodies to e.g. fight a nasty cancer, do you really think there's going to be enough spare CPU cycles, RAM, or communications bandwidth for them to run NTP requests around to each other?
I recently fielded a request from someone who was building an embedded device; the trick was, it was going to be pre-programmed, then deployed everywhere, and not have local time beacons (i.e. it couldn't access local beacons, such as local cell towers, which send out "time is now" broadcasts). The question was: "How do I sync the time to the local time?".
My response was "Why?".
The reason finally boiled down to wanting to put the time in log files, and to display it on an LCD.
There was no reason for either of these: if the devices are Internet connected, just grab an HTTP header by hitting a known HTTP server, and log in UTC, since the time in the header will be reported as a UTC time + a zone delta. For the display: why the hell do you need to display the time on the small LCD? Because it was the only neutral thing he could think of to display on the LCD. "Can't I just look at my watch/iPhone/VCR/microwave/refrigerator/dishwasher/clock? Or just display it in UTC? Or display a PacMan animation instead of a clock?". "I guess so".
Problem solved with no need to sync clocks.
Non-synchronized clocks are only a problem if you let them be a problem/make them a problem.
We only get worked up about nuclear disasters because they're so unusual.
No we don't. We get worked up about them because they go on for so long.
No we don't. We get worked up because of the collective U.S. guilt over the use of nuclear weapons to end WW II has resulted in an immediate knee-jerk response in the negative, particularly among the majority of the population, who can't even correctly pronounce the word "nuclear".
Chernobyl, Fukushima, and the disaster movie "The China Syndrome" have all added fuel to this fire of ignorance, but it was started by feeling guilty about taking action to end a war.
So basically, if I'm a government... all I have to do is deny you regulatory certification because "you have too much RAM" or because "your encryption runs too fast", and the you, the phone vendor, get to walk the regulatory and Android licensing tightrope of breaking either the RAM or the encryption library to get your certification.
It occurs to me this problem could go away if Paris had reliable power.
Hospitals store about the same amount of fuel, have similar chiller requirements, and periodically fire up their backup generators to ensure functionality.
And, really, the "580,000 liters of diesel fuel" is a LOT.
Not really. That's about what a typical hospital emergency backup system stores on site, as well (150,000 gallons is considered a minimum, which translates to a little under 570,000 liters -- and that's a minimum; most systems store a lot more, especially designated trauma centers).
Why should the government, or anyone not financially involved in the design, construction, and operation of the datacenter pay if the datacenter is not operating within the parameters that it was licensed for?
First of all, the government is involved in the design and the construction, since it insinuates itself pretty thoroughly in the process. So it's involved.
Second, the arguments were that the data center was operating within the parameters for which it was licensed, but that it should not have been licensed at those parameters.
I work remotely, for Google, and get good performance reviews. I suppose one counterexample doesn't necessarily destroy your claim, but it does call it into question.
It greatly depends on the group, but the group I was involved with was rather large, and has since gotten rid of many of the remote employees.
The most successful remote employees were those who were well thought of because of their existing reputation in the field, or because they would periodically fly in and stay for at least a week to build a rapport, before flying out again, or because they were critical path, and most everyone knew it, and they did their job.
The least successful were those who were *not* critical path, and most everyone knew it, or they would fly in rarely (e.g. every 3 months), and tended to stay for only a couple of days, or who were relatively unknown players in CS.
A lot of the review intermediation is also done by your manager, meaning that if your manager likes you and your work, they can buffer bad reviews, and pick other people to place at the bottom of the bell curve instead of you.
Stacked ranking is somewhat of a malaise on the entire industry at this point, and you don't have to look very far to find articles about the negative effects it has had on organization (predominantly, it causes forced churn of employees). Here are a couple of them:
long methods - someone thought it a good idea to limit every method to no more than 20 lines.
Show them tcp_input(). After they have a heart attack at the number of pages it takes to implement the input state machine for the TCP protocol, bury them, and get on with your life.
Seriously people still use the goto statement and love it? I have never meet anyone that loved the goto statement.
It's only loved by people who think functions should be single entry, single exit, so that you can wrap the code in asserts during testing so that you can be sure that you've got the right lock state on entry and exit. It's also great for detecting memory leaks.
If you never use locks, or never had a lock leak, or never had a memory leak, or know bugger all about assembly (the compiler is going to emit the JMP instruction, whether you like it or not, and if you don't understand assembly, you should probably not be coding), then I guess avoiding "goto" and using all sorts of weird conditionals to break out of two or more nested loops would work for you.
I think it's time for companies (and tech companies especially) to start to encourage more remote workers.
Companies with stacked ranking don't do "remote".
This is because stacked ranking is basically a high school popularity contest which pits employees against each other to stay above the bottom part of the bell curve so that they don't end up on a PIP ("Performance Improvement Program") or just plain fired/asked to lead/offered severance.
When Marissa Mayer came into Yahoo from Google, she instituted stacked ranking. It's the main reason she disallowed remote workers, since they were going to be the lowest ranked anyway, and if you are going to be ranked low, you might as well pack your bags before it's an issue.
So... between a remote worker, who you hardly ever have any personal interactions with, and a local worker who you eat lunch with daily, and consider a good work friend/buddy... who are you going to shove under the bus?
Exactly.
So remote workers are strongly discouraged at most companies that originated in the Amazon/Google/Facebook cultures, or hired HR or management out of those cultures, which is to say "Company X is successful; let's act just like company X, and we will be successful, too".
Slashdot Mirror
This may shock you, but when the Feds put Al Capone away for tax evasion, they had a pretty good idea that he was the head of a large criminal enterprise. Maybe you're too young to have seen "The Untouchables".
It doesn't surprise me at all.
You have once again failed to answer my question. So I will rephrase it.
(1) Should the feds have placed the same scrutiny on Al Capones phone calls, based on his conviction for tax evasion, as they would for any other tax evader, OR
(2) Should the feds have placed *more* scrutiny on Al Capone alone, thus violating the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment
Pick one.
1: What is the purpose of monitoring the phone calls of someone who has been convicted of selling five ounces of weed?
It prevents someone in the same cell block from using them as a covert channel in order to avoid monitoring their own communications. In other words, their unmonitored communications can not be utilized to avoid the monitoring of other people whose communications *MUST* be monitored, due to the heinousness of their crimes.
Or someone who has been convicted of a DUI?
It prevents someone in the same cell block from using them as a covert channel in order to avoid monitoring their own communications. In other words, their unmonitored communications can not be utilized to avoid the monitoring of other people whose communications *MUST* be monitored, due to the heinousness of their crimes.
They may have also been convicted of the DUI, while the authorities had a pretty good idea that they were the head of a large criminal enterprise. In order to avoid a violation of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment, they must monitor everyone not specifically convicted equally.
Do you think he might be operating an ongoing criminal enterprise of drunk drivers?
It's a low probability scenario.
In addition to the reasons already cited, he might have a better lawyer purchased for him by someone operating an ongoing criminal enterprise engaged in human trafficking (as an example) in exchange for his services in passing messages in order to enable *them* to continue to operate a criminal enterprise.
Just because P1 (prisoner one) can't talk directly to C1 (Criminal organization one), doesn't mean that they would not be able to tale to P2 and have them talk to C1 on their behalf. If we only monitored P1's communication, you are suggesting that:
P1 -> C1 : NOT ALLOWED!
P1 -> P2 -> C1 : ALLOWED! HAPPY CRIMINALS!
That's just stupid, since you can't monitor communications between prisoners... you can't wire-tap people (yet).
2: I'm surprised that you're not more ashamed of promoting government's failed policies just so a family member can keep a government job.
YOU are the government. You don't seem to be getting this part of how it works. If you want to stop continuation of failed governmental policies, then damn well vote in people who will discontinue them, and quit bitching about the status quo. Bitching will not change the status quo. Putting different people in charge *will*.
I'm not *promoting* their policies for any reason, particularly not to protect a job.
I'm saying that the idea that laws derived from governmental policy -- as all laws are -- should be equally enforced.
This is *entirely* disjoint from the discussion on the methods of enforcement.
I would, for example, be willing to state that monitoring *only* the communications of convicted leaders of criminal enterprises, if *you* were willing to have it made impossible for them to communicate with any other prisoners.
Personally, I do not think placing all prisoners in solitary confinement is a workable strategy.
If the americans had wanted to end the war, they simply could have dropped the bombs in 10km hight, or in 10 km distance over the sea, or in an actual war zone on soldiers.
This is frequently claimed; however, there's really no evidence to support the claim -- which is why, I suppose, you prefaced it by calling it cynical.
The Emperor was being "managed" by the upper level military hierarchy in Japan, at the time, and it was necessary to sway popular opinion, such that the Emperor would be in a position to demand that Japan sue for peace, over top of this "management", without being assassinated. Short of civilian casualties, it's unlikely that anything else would have accomplished that.
The second bomb drop was necessary because they believed we did not have more than one device. Which is why they did not sue for peace after the first bomb was dropped, since they were able to utilize this argument to manage public opinion. Two provided the public fear that we might have N of them (we were working on material for more, but this was a bluff on our part). At which time peace broke out.
If anything, we really screwed the Emperor, who was our ally in a desire for peace, in all but public acknowledgement, by insisting that he be removed from power, rather than leaving the governmental structures more or less intact, and beheading the military (figuratively speaking).
What kind of "continuing criminal enterprise" is a guy who's been convicted of a DUI going to operate?
Depends. Al Capone was convicted on tax evasion. Are you saying his calls should or should not have been more closely monitored than any other tax evader?
The justice system has already identified the criminal bosses, but they're monitoring the calls of everyone who is incarcerated.
Yes. They are. The prisoners lost the right to private phone calls through due process of law. It doesn't matter what they are convicted of. It also guards against one prisoner using another prisoner to pass messages on their behalf.
That's because the prisons are fiefdoms to hand out jobs to friends and family.
I pretty much have no idea in heck how what you just said relates to the statement to which you are replying. Are you claiming that, because the last kitchen worker hired at Lompoc was, say the nephew of the assistant warden's golf buddy, that the call I received was pre-screened by an operator who was totally unrelated, and whose job it was to prescreen calls?
Fifty percent of the people in prison are there for drug violations, not because of "cultural conflict". In fact, the number of people in prison for "cultural conflict" is probably vanishingly small. But good try.
I'm ignoring the other 50%, as you did.
They were convicted of a criminal act, defined as breaking a legally enacted law, and being convicted by a jury of their peers of having broken that law, and then sentenced in accordance to (sometimes legally mandatory) sentencing guidelines.
As I said before: either work to change the law, or don't engage in the illegal activity, or don't get caught doing it.
Culture conflict is the basis of a lot of violence, and a lot of crime against persons. Almost every hate crime has its basis in a culture conflict, whether recent, or ongoing over hundreds of years. To the extent that you agree that there is such a thing as a "drug culture", then drug crimes are crimes due to culture conflict.
Warehousing the poor does not contribute to society. And are government jobs the only choice for your second cousin?
I agree that warehousing the poor does not contribute to society. However, you have completely failed to establish that prisons exist to warehouse the poor, or that laws are enacted to criminalize being poor. I'll agree to some correlation between being an addict and being poor, but I won't agree that there is a causation in one direction or the other (i.e. are they poor because they spend all their money on addictive drugs?, etc.).
And it doesn't *matter* what her job choices are, since you are basing your value judgement of her on your prejudices, and have not demonstrated that criminals do not need to be monitored, regardless of their crimes.
Why? The guy is already in fucking prison.
To prevent someone from continuing to operate a criminal enterprise from behind bars. To prevent them from arranging smuggling of contraband. To prevent them from arranging completion of the criminal activities that landed them in prison by third parties. To prevent them ordering hits. To prevent them from communicating to other suspects in an ongoing investigation that it's still ongoing. To prevent communication of attempts by law enforcement to obtain information regarding other criminals still at large.
In short, because bad guys are bad guys.
You haven't made a collect call in a while, have you. "If you accept the charges, press 1" No human is needed.
I've had a non-collect call from a prisoner before. There was still an operator telling me who was calling, where they were calling from, and asking if I wanted to accept the call. I declined (it was a wrong number).
However, even if it's a right number, you may not want to take the call. It could be for the purposes of ongoing harassment of a victim, of the type that landed the person in prison in the first place. It could be for the purposes of witness intimidation. It could be for the purpose of jury tampering in an ongoing criminal case. In most instances, when asked this question, you have the option of telling the operator that you do not want to receive such calls from this prisoner in the future -- or to blacklist your number for any prisoner from that facility.
See 1 and 2.
And let's not forget that the prisons get kickback from the telcos when prisoners are overcharged for calls. And not just to "cover costs", either. They get a nice bowl of gravy from the 2 or 3 companies that provide phones for prisoners.
I can't speak to the kickbacks (never having observed the practice). Your complaints against my points #1 and #2 do nothing to impeach my point #3.
Finally, this might be a worthwhile time to ask, "Why the FUCK are there so many people in prison in the US?" We have about 4% of the world's population and about 22% of the world's prisoners. Are Americans just a lot more likely to be prisoners? Are we prone to crime because we watched The Untouchables reruns on TV? Do we have a higher percentage of violent sociopaths or is it because keeping people locked up takes away their right to vote, and the people who are in power cannot stay in power if lots of people vote?
Many states allow prisoners to vote absentee. IMO, it shouldn't be allowed, but felony disenfranchisement is permitted under two of the amendments (the 5th and 14th, via the "due process" clauses in each of them), and it's more or less a states rights issue when enforcing state law as to what constitutes a disenfranchisable offense, under the law, for which a due process application can be made to the prisoner's voting rights.
As to why there are so many prisoners: they were convicted under the law by a jury of their peers. If you don't like this, work to change the law. Yes, a lot of them are drug related offenses which would not merit prison time in other countries. Just as abortion in the U.S. does not merit prison time, as it does in parts of Europe.
The U.S. is also significantly more multicultural than Europe, being an almost entirely immigrant nation, and the recent (historically speaking) emphasis on multiculturalism and political correctness have led to a lot of cultural conflict that wasn't there before.
So design things to not require synced clocks.
What happens when you can't or such a design would be more difficult than a global shared time reference?
What happens when every system can't just stamp their own "idea of local time" on to an event when it occurs? What happens when every systems "idea of local time" changes over time?
Non-synchronized clocks are only a problem if you let them be a problem/make them a problem.
Obviously it is best to avoid dependencies which require synchronization where possible. Unfortunately it isn't always possible.
In those cases, use NTP. Or use direct tier one information from GPS or cell tower data (if you are OK with the +/- 1 second on the cell tower's idea of the time). Or set the device's idea of local time as part of the handshake establishing the connection with the server (although this last one wouldn't work for mesh networks not communicating with servers).
The problem with delta's as you describe is how you account for network latency in your delta. Its impossible to tell clock drift from network latency when syncing two clocks in this way.
That a fair ask, assuming an asymmetric latency.
The easy way to handle this is to also send along your delta calculation with your packet as well, so that the other end can compare its delta calculation with your delta calculation.
Another alternative is to include this information in the establishment of the connection, as part of the encryption startup and the authentication handshake which establishes the credentials authorizing the server operations by the client. Although that would not account for variable latency across connections with long durations, as carrying around the extra delta would.
They do when that is a sane thing to do. Sometimes a precise notion of time isn't important. But many activities are impossible without a rather precise determination of the time across multiple devices.
[...]
The only way to ensure the local time on your clock is correct is to synchronize with another clock. A clock providing arbitrary time stamps is worse than useless. In fact for many activities what you suggest would lead to accidents, fraud and all sorts of confusion.
Any time you have a measuring device where you care about its accuracy you have to compare it to a reference standard. That's why we have highly accurate atomic clocks maintained by standards organizations to calibrate our clocks to.
These are reasonable arguments for a UTC time. Which you can get by hitting a known HTTP server, which I've already pointed out.
These are not reasonable arguments for trying to do NTP from an IoT device, and they are not reasonable arguments for trying to do NTP for most applications.
I think the most ironic part is that they are willing to pay up to $15K for a bug + a white paper on the bug, but not willing to pay anything more, should you include patches that actually fix the bug.
You would think that a bug *fix* was the end goal.
I'm of two minds, as to why this is the case:
(1) They just don't get this whole "Open Source" thing yet, although they seem to be trying really, really hard
(2) The intent of the program is actually to get the white papers, rather than the bug fixes. That, in turn, has several possible motivations, but I think the most likely of those motivations are:
(2)(A) They want to find security people to hire through this program, and this is easier than evaluating the honesty of a resume, or trusting an interview process to discern between someone who can't do the job, someone who can do it (but probably won't), and someone who can and will do the job. In other words, it's a pretty cheap candidate qualification mechanism, compared to traditional HR processes in this regard (qualified candidate acquisition probably costs them many multiples of $15K per qualified candidate they find, since they have to put the unqualified ones through the same process to weed them out). If so, it's clever an innovative.
(2)(B) They want to obtain an insight into the correct mindset to use when approaching an exploit, so that they can quantify it, and teach it to other people. This would be a much more ambitious use of the data, since not a day goes by when there isn't some idiot wanting to "learn security" from the perspective of someone who can do a systems penetration posting on Slashdot (in fact, there was a new article on it on Slashdot today, not just an isolated idiot post). I'm pretty sure that they will fail in this regard, but I do have to wonder if there is government "cyber warfare" (finger quotes intentional) dollars underwriting this.
So I'm generally suspicious of the motivations and/or cluefullness of such a program, but hey, having a program at all is a step forward.
I'm not sure why they don't just switch to a Glock in .45. Cheap, durable, repairable, cost-effective, and very reliable.
Glock .45 is not an option. The primary problem with it is that it does not use NATO standard 9mm rounds. Rounds are standardized at 9mm so that ammunition can be shared among allies in a joint exercise or conflict scenario.
The call costs are proportional to staffing. This, in turn, is proportional to the number of phones available for prisoner use.
I have family members who are on the corrections side of things, rather than the prisoner side of things.
1. All calls must be monitored by a human.
2. All calls involve a human operator asking the target of the call if they will accept the call.
3. As the number of phones goes up, the number of humans you have to hire to do this simultaneously goes up.
So the immediate consequence of this will be a reduction in staffing, a reduction in the number of available phones for prisoners to use, and a reduction in the time windows during which the phones are allowed to be used by the prisoners. This will down-limit the overhead to the point that the 11 cents rate can cover those costs. I have a second cousin who's probably going to lose her job over it.
This does not seem to be a worthwhile decision, on behalf of the prisoners. It sounds more like a decision based on a false understanding of the circumstances involved in prison phone calls.
So design things to not require synced clocks.
It's not like you couldn't include your idea of your local time (whatever it is) in your NFS requests, and then have the server take its idea of its local time, generate a delta, and apply that to all the timestamps that you are trying to set on a file. Or conversely, when you do a stat, the server could include its idea of the local time, the client could use that to generate a delta vs. its own idea of local time, and apply that delta to the time being reported up from the kernel to user space.
The whole idea of having to synchronize clocks between machines is rather moronic. When you have a billion mechanical computers wandering around in your body with robot bodies to e.g. fight a nasty cancer, do you really think there's going to be enough spare CPU cycles, RAM, or communications bandwidth for them to run NTP requests around to each other?
I recently fielded a request from someone who was building an embedded device; the trick was, it was going to be pre-programmed, then deployed everywhere, and not have local time beacons (i.e. it couldn't access local beacons, such as local cell towers, which send out "time is now" broadcasts). The question was: "How do I sync the time to the local time?".
My response was "Why?".
The reason finally boiled down to wanting to put the time in log files, and to display it on an LCD.
There was no reason for either of these: if the devices are Internet connected, just grab an HTTP header by hitting a known HTTP server, and log in UTC, since the time in the header will be reported as a UTC time + a zone delta. For the display: why the hell do you need to display the time on the small LCD? Because it was the only neutral thing he could think of to display on the LCD. "Can't I just look at my watch/iPhone/VCR/microwave/refrigerator/dishwasher/clock? Or just display it in UTC? Or display a PacMan animation instead of a clock?". "I guess so".
Problem solved with no need to sync clocks.
Non-synchronized clocks are only a problem if you let them be a problem/make them a problem.
We only get worked up about nuclear disasters because they're so unusual.
No we don't. We get worked up about them because they go on for so long.
No we don't. We get worked up because of the collective U.S. guilt over the use of nuclear weapons to end WW II has resulted in an immediate knee-jerk response in the negative, particularly among the majority of the population, who can't even correctly pronounce the word "nuclear".
Chernobyl, Fukushima, and the disaster movie "The China Syndrome" have all added fuel to this fire of ignorance, but it was started by feeling guilty about taking action to end a war.
So basically, if I'm a government... all I have to do is deny you regulatory certification because "you have too much RAM" or because "your encryption runs too fast", and the you, the phone vendor, get to walk the regulatory and Android licensing tightrope of breaking either the RAM or the encryption library to get your certification.
Check.
It occurs to me this problem could go away if Paris had reliable power.
Hospitals store about the same amount of fuel, have similar chiller requirements, and periodically fire up their backup generators to ensure functionality.
And, really, the "580,000 liters of diesel fuel" is a LOT.
Not really. That's about what a typical hospital emergency backup system stores on site, as well (150,000 gallons is considered a minimum, which translates to a little under 570,000 liters -- and that's a minimum; most systems store a lot more, especially designated trauma centers).
Guess they better close their hospitals, too.
[...]corporate America's[...]
Interxion is a Dutch corporation, headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, with data centers all over Europe.
In other words, no Americans involved (well, except in writing the Open Source Software which likely runs the thing).
Why should the government, or anyone not financially involved in the design, construction, and operation of the datacenter pay if the datacenter is not operating within the parameters that it was licensed for?
First of all, the government is involved in the design and the construction, since it insinuates itself pretty thoroughly in the process. So it's involved.
Second, the arguments were that the data center was operating within the parameters for which it was licensed, but that it should not have been licensed at those parameters.
So you kind of need to read the article?
But 1 case per 44,000 (2.3 per 100,000) is pretty close to what you would expect from the general population.
The actual rates in the general population are much higher.
You are quoting based on numbers of deaths vs. number of people contracting Leukemia.
The actual numbers a 13.0 per 100,000 people, for 2014, per the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society:
https://www.lls.org/sites/defa...
I work remotely, for Google, and get good performance reviews. I suppose one counterexample doesn't necessarily destroy your claim, but it does call it into question.
It greatly depends on the group, but the group I was involved with was rather large, and has since gotten rid of many of the remote employees.
The most successful remote employees were those who were well thought of because of their existing reputation in the field, or because they would periodically fly in and stay for at least a week to build a rapport, before flying out again, or because they were critical path, and most everyone knew it, and they did their job.
The least successful were those who were *not* critical path, and most everyone knew it, or they would fly in rarely (e.g. every 3 months), and tended to stay for only a couple of days, or who were relatively unknown players in CS.
A lot of the review intermediation is also done by your manager, meaning that if your manager likes you and your work, they can buffer bad reviews, and pick other people to place at the bottom of the bell curve instead of you.
Stacked ranking is somewhat of a malaise on the entire industry at this point, and you don't have to look very far to find articles about the negative effects it has had on organization (predominantly, it causes forced churn of employees). Here are a couple of them:
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://qz.com/320532/marissa-m...
http://www.nbcnews.com/busines...
http://www.halogensoftware.com...
A number of companies in Silicon Valley just give severance to the bottom 30% (yes, 30%!) in the rankings.
long methods - someone thought it a good idea to limit every method to no more than 20 lines.
Show them tcp_input(). After they have a heart attack at the number of pages it takes to implement the input state machine for the TCP protocol, bury them, and get on with your life.
Seriously people still use the goto statement and love it? I have never meet anyone that loved the goto statement.
It's only loved by people who think functions should be single entry, single exit, so that you can wrap the code in asserts during testing so that you can be sure that you've got the right lock state on entry and exit. It's also great for detecting memory leaks.
If you never use locks, or never had a lock leak, or never had a memory leak, or know bugger all about assembly (the compiler is going to emit the JMP instruction, whether you like it or not, and if you don't understand assembly, you should probably not be coding), then I guess avoiding "goto" and using all sorts of weird conditionals to break out of two or more nested loops would work for you.
Because barracks were not considered "housing"?
Because it would detract from the income of small apartment complexes who wanted to rent to Google and Facebook employees, and charge them huge rents.
I think it's time for companies (and tech companies especially) to start to encourage more remote workers.
Companies with stacked ranking don't do "remote".
This is because stacked ranking is basically a high school popularity contest which pits employees against each other to stay above the bottom part of the bell curve so that they don't end up on a PIP ("Performance Improvement Program") or just plain fired/asked to lead/offered severance.
When Marissa Mayer came into Yahoo from Google, she instituted stacked ranking. It's the main reason she disallowed remote workers, since they were going to be the lowest ranked anyway, and if you are going to be ranked low, you might as well pack your bags before it's an issue.
So... between a remote worker, who you hardly ever have any personal interactions with, and a local worker who you eat lunch with daily, and consider a good work friend/buddy... who are you going to shove under the bus?
Exactly.
So remote workers are strongly discouraged at most companies that originated in the Amazon/Google/Facebook cultures, or hired HR or management out of those cultures, which is to say "Company X is successful; let's act just like company X, and we will be successful, too".
Maybe Google could add Google Condos/Flats/Apartments to their campus? Hmm, well that would require Government approval too.
They tried. The city council shot them down. Facebook also tried to do this, and were also shot down.
"...the de-identification of innocent individuals"
So whoever is left is guilty, right? That'd be a convenient way for juries to decide things...