We are Systems Administrators. Yes we can read other peoples emails, we can look into other peoples personal lives, we could be stealing corporate data and selling it, we could grab the spreadsheets from HR and commit ID theft. We could do a lot of things... but we don't.
We don't because we have integrity. And frankly, that isn't the career path we chose.
Do we snoop? Sure, sometimes we do. I get to do it professionally as an auditor. I look to see what files are stored where on the network, and what access controls are in place to protect them. I capture data leaving the firewall to see if sensitive information is leaving the building, and I frequently get a glimpse into other peoples lives.
Want to know what I found?
I found out that most normal people live normal lives. If I see something I'm not supposed to see, then "I never saw it."
Guess what, secretaries, er, Executive Assistants have been monitoring the events and the goings-on in the office for decades. They know when forging the boss' signature is called for (in fact, I had a secretary that could sign my name so well that even I could not tell the difference). They know when to keep their lips zipped, how to be discrete.
Guess who else monitors my life - the Janitor! He has access to every room in the building. Same with the maintenance guys.
Actually, all you need is the password hashes. You don't even need to crack the password.
Example: When you go to login to your server, you type your username and password into your machine and click 'submit'. Your machine sends a request to the server to login (no credentials are sent). The server responds with a nonce, (nonsense data/random garbage). Your PC takes the password you typed in and hashes it, then it uses the hash to encrypt the nonce it received from the server. It combines the encrypted nonce with the username and transmits it back to the server. The server does a lookup on the username, takes its private copy of your hashed password (stored on the server) and uses that hash to decrypt the nonce it sent you, then compares the decrypted nonce to the nonce it sent out to you. If it matches, you must have typed in the correct password and you are issued an access ticket; your actual password is never sent across the network.
The weak spot is the hash. If I have gathered the hashes from the server, I do not need to go through the trouble of cracking them. I have written a custom login tool that all you do is type in the username. The program looks up the hashed password associated with the username and uses the hashed value to encrypt the nonce.
At this point, it doesn't matter if your password is 1 character or 14 random characters, if I have your hashes, you're toast. Cracking the passwords is simply an academic exercise at that point.:)
Son, we live in a world that has firewalls, and those firewalls have to be maintained by men with root access. Whose gonna do it? You? You, with your blogging buddies? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You whine about port blocking and you curse the administrators. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: That blocking ports, while frustrating, probably saves bandwidth... And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves packets. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at LAN parties, you want me on that firewall, you need me on that firewall. We use words like source address, port 80, destination... We use these words as the backbone of an access control list. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain why I block access to YouTube to a man who points and clicks on the very network that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a whitepaper, and create your own web 2.0 app. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
By that logic, there is a clear intersect between people who eat carrots and death. Over the past 10,000 years, 100% of the people who ate a carrot at some point in their life, they eventually died.
Forget the fact that, ahem, well, everyone dies. Because carrots and death intersect, and I hate carrots.
Since when is Islam a race? Islam is a religion whose practitioners are called Muslims. Muslims can be of any race. Just like followers of Christianity are called Christians, and there are Christians of every skin color. So, cursing a religion does NOT make a person RACIST, nor does it qualify as HATE SPEECH.
I think you might be very surprised at how much value comes out of running these types of simulations. I work in the tech field and that side of the story is easy to imagine but as I worked with economists and academia it gave me a new appreciation that I would like to share with you.
Pre-Y2k, the government wanted to plan for the "Systemic Perturbations" that could come out of the Y2k bug. The US Gov't said to its top economists, military leaders: "Assume it is going to be bad, the worst case scenario." For once, perhaps the first time in history, we knew beforehand WHAT the vertical shock to the system was going to be and on what date and time it was going to happen. This gave the discussion a very real sense of importance because it wasn't hypothetical. In disaster planing, you don't know what the vertical shock is going to be-- think of a rock hitting a pond, you don't know how big the rock will be or when, where it will hit, and from a planning scenario it doesn't matter because what you need to plan for is how to deal with the huge splash it creates and the waves and ripples it creates. Once you have created plans to deal with the splash and ripples, what they term as "System Perturbations" you are then ready for any vertical shock (rock hitting pond) to the system. The rock can hit anywhere and be any size. We already know how to respond to the splash and run all the ripples to ground.
So, with Y2k, the Pentagon engaged with a global financial firm of Cantor Fitzgerald to plan for the vertical shock of Y2k and what sort of rule set resets are going to take place. If Y2k was going to be big, Banks failing, power outages, trading stops, mass chaos, martial law... what would be the GLOBAL impact of such massive chaos. Interestingly, Cantor Fitzgerald stated: "I think we've seen this before, in China, with SARS."
Huh? What does China and SARS have to do with Y2k bug?
The Chinese healthcare system, and by extension their entire government was very closed about revealing any of their internal problems. When the SARS outbreak happened, Chinese authorities ignored the problem. When SARS started spreading, the World Health Organization (WHO) started inquiring with China about the outbreaks and extent of the spread within China. China flat denied that any problem existed. When people started dying, the WHO shut down all flights leaving certain Chinese provinces suspected of spreading SARS. This had a DIRECT impact on the Chinese economy and government.
The Chinese immediately responded. "AH, roo mean SARS! Well, we have very much SARS!" To this day, there are police stationed at the airport that will approach any passenger and take their temperature on the spot. If you are running a fever, or you don't look 100% healthy, you don't fly. You've just won an extended 3 day vacation with all expenses paid by YOU because they don't ever want to run the risk of spreading disease and having their airports shut down again. This also started the Chinese equivalent of the CDC to start cooperating with the WHO, which is why we know about the H5N1 "Bird Fru" virus years before it has become a viable threat to humans.
The real lesson here was this: China received a vertical shock to their system. The direct result of that shock was rapid changes taking place to China's political system, changes that NEVER could have come about on their own absent the external influence. An external event causing internal change. Internal change that never could have come internally. Rapid policy changes that forever alter the way the country interacts with the outside world. This was huge.
The correlation to Y2k was the recognition that the vertical system shock to the global system would create unheard of system perturbations. The output of which would cause a permanent global policy change that would forever alter the rules by which governments interact with each other and how each government interacts with its own citizens. External events driving internal change.
Like, how do you know this, and it isn't a rogue agent we have to be worried about but a rogue head of government.
How do I know this? I work with and interact with them on a regular basis. It is against the law for the FBI to spy on American Citizens. Everything they do is structured such that individual agents cannot operate autonomously. In fact, the checks and balances that are in place with this system are more restrictive and hold the agents more accountable than has ever been in the past. Theoretically, 10 years ago a Special Agent In Charge could set up an illegal wiretap on his wife's lover, or whatever or whomever they chose, and as long as he didn't record the events, "it never happened."
With this system, there are logs created of who looked at what, when, where, why, and how.
Another example, besides the current issue of the "eavesdropping network", is the former Carnivore system. All Carnivore was was a packet capture program to sniff Ethernet packets, basically the same thing as Ethereal, WireShark or TCPdump except with all useful features disabled. This packet capture software would ONLY capture traffic transmitted to or from ONE SPECIFIC network address. It was a severely crippled packet capture software that LIMITED what the FBI could see based upon the network addresses specified in the warrant.
Nevertheless, "privacy advocates" went nuts, and people flamed the FBI for *GHASP* keeping current with technology and wiretaps and having the ability to track cybercrime.
Security experts scratched their collective heads because any network admin who knows anything about packet capture could plainly see that Carnivore was a severe restriction on the FEDs collective ability to monitor network traffic.
Here in the USA in the 1980's we made a major push to get science taught to school kids. Every one of us kids thought we would grow up to become astronauts. The result is now we have a generation of cynics who still can't point out planet Earth on a map of the globe.
Information is compartmentalized that very few people have access to all the data. No single agent can just arbitrarily listen in on your calls or data.
It sounds like the system was patterned after the existing NCIC records database the FBI maintains. The database keeps a record of every query made and who made it, why, and the case number for the case that they were investigating. Much like your credit report. If you apply for credit, the creditor must get your authorization to pull your credit report and their access is recorded on that credit report. You can go see who's been looking at your credit by pulling your own credit report. You can access your FBI file by submitting a FOIA request. If 'Very Special Agent Mulder' decides to check you out without proper authorization, his career is over.
I have tremendous faith and confidence in our professional law enforcement agencies. They really do take privacy seriously in order to maintain our trust. We may bitch about it a lot, but in reality they have more interesting people to watch than you or I.
This is not an official release or opinion from Microsoft, per se. This is the opinion of Steve Riley who, in my opinion, has a tenuous grasp on security to begin with. That the "War on Terror" is overblown: in what sense? That is a pretty broad statement. I do not believe that we will ever see a "Cyber Jihad" because the worst I've ever seen come out of the Salafi Jihadists is flaming posts on message boards. Piss those guys off and they'll type in all-caps then figure out a way to blow themselves up.
Does this mean we ignore software security? Uh, no.
I started questioning Steve Riley's advise when he stated that explaining that ROI == economics in information security. While easily confused by some, economics is quite different than accounting. Now, perhaps I can see the difference because I've been studying the issue with colleagues that have PhD's in economics. Nevertheless, this tells me that he is not an expert in these issues and has not studied them.
It appears to be working... I mean, when was the last time you read an article that was written about product documentation? (Would this be considered meta-data?)
As I peer into my crystal ball, I can see.... that you, sir, are going to do just fine out there in this world!
I should have clarified, I am only referring to High School kids. I recall an article I read where in one High School, EVERY GIRL that tried out for Cheerleading got in. Oh political correctness, what hath you wrought?
Or maybe your statement was just a "clever" attempt to limit critical responses and manipulate the moderators which didn't work on me?;)
I much prefer "Jedi Mind Trick".
As for the Flynn Effect; I support that theory, it makes sense. However, there is no correlation between IQ and intelligence, wisdom, or common sense. I have met a lot of high IQ people that are complete idiots. There is no conversion chart between IQ and Wisdom.
I equate IQ to voltage, wisdom to amperage. A high voltage and low aperage makes your hair stand up and feel kinda funny (kinda like high IQ people make you feel). Low voltage at high amperage, that'll get some work done. High voltage AND high amperage? Now THATS what I'm talkin about!
More than just a generation gap. I'm still young enough to bridge this gap.
I need to start with an example: If you want to get a scientific research grant funded today, or any grant for that matter, all you need is to do is to somehow tie it into global warming. Seriously. The city of Boston received public grant money for its wireless mesh network that will sit atop city light poles by stating that the purpose of the network was to "provide city-wide internet access and to use the nodes to monitor air pollution and climate change."
Did you just say "CLIMATE CHANGE?" DING DING DING DING DING! That is the MAGIC PHRASE!
What I am saying is irrespective of whether humans can change the weather. I pass no judgment on that issue. What I am saying is that if you want a grant to get funded, you need to somehow tie it in to global climate change and it'll be an instant winner. Absent that, well, good luck!
Well, back when you were going through school in the 70's, my friend, the magic phrase was "fix education". But the problem was in that very assumption that there was something that needed fixing. Sure, there were under-performing districts, and socio-economic influences, but rather than address these issues directly, lets get a grant funded to research new methods of teaching that which has been taught and perfected over millennia such that everyone can pass a standardized achievement test...
And thus began the effort to raise the level of educational standards by lowering passing scores until the least among us are now getting a passing grade.
I'd like to propose a toast: "TO MEDIOCRITY!" "I now, do hereby declare, that everyone is now equal. Johnny made the baseball team, and so did everyone else. Nobody learned anything but everybody sure does feel good about themselves! Now, with this healthy attitude of 'I-could-crap-on-a-canvas-and-sell-it-as-a-modern- art-piece,-because-it's-mine-and-I'm-special', it is time for you to go out into the really real world and fight the EVIL CORPORATE AMERICA that sees no value in your self esteem and would rather hire a foreign worker that can discern between a racial comment and a racist comment, a worker who can solve a quadratic equation AND separate their glass and plastic bottles."
You don't need to know ANYTHING about American History to compile C++, but what you do need is critical thinking skills. With the kids of today, if the answers aren't in the back of the textbook or freely available through Google, they go into vapor lock.
The University students I refer to are primarily at the University of Minnesota. The UofM is a stellar college. I am very good friends with numerous Professors and Grad students, as well as those who have graduated and gone on to teach at other Universities. These professors now teaching at these other universities, all over the nation, they are astounded at how 'mentally soft' the recent round of students are. Again, they're not stupid, they've just never been challenged!
If you can get an A in class without even trying hard, where is the incentive to try hard? IF kids can now go up for the school baseball team, no matter how much they excel or suck, everyone who tries out for the team gets a spot; they just keep splitting the teams and adding coaches like its some sort of extracurricular PE class JUST to make sure everyone "FEELS GOOD" and nobody gets their precious feelings hurt. What do you think this does to the students that REALLY DO excel at sports? It tells them that "While you may have talent, it doesn't matter because we don't want to run the risk of having Johnny get his feelings hurt so you might as well just give up your dreams of a sports scholarship now because our politically correct sports policy virtually guarantees that we will never win a state championship or even raise you up to a level that you'll get noticed at." (Heck, if there is nothing else I learned in school, at least I learned to appreciate the subtle beauty of a run-on sentence.)
The entire educational system retards the mental growth and development of the bright kids until everyone is at the same dysfunctional level. Then the administrators keep lowering the bar on the "Standards" just to keep everyone moving through the system. The teachers hate it too! They want to teach math, science, history, reading and writing but instead they are given a State mandated outline of what the kids will be tested on this year so make sure they know these particular facts... so the teachers feed them the list of questions and answers to make sure they can pass. What have the kids learned?
They learned how to memorize answers.
If you, the person reading this, you, the one who just graduated can look around you and see this, then I think you have a chance. If you look around you at your peers and see nothing wrong then I weep for you.
I personally think you can get a better education at a Community College than you can get at most of the Ivy League institutions of today (I'm speaking of a 4 year degree, not grad school). First, if you get into an Ivy League college, that alone tells me that you have worked your entire young life working for a good college entrance exam, which means learning the answers to questions. There are more Nobel prize winning professors at an Ivy League school, you bet, but can anyone show me the correlation between winning a Nobel Prize and being a good teacher? There isn't any! The teachers who teach at a Community College, from my experience, have real world experience and have decided to teach classes for the sheer joy of teaching, and they teach from experience, which is by far the best teacher.
As far as "What is the output of 1 good worker?", it depends. Here, I'll quote supreme court justice Potter Stewart: "...it is hard to define, but I know it when I see it."
How is this a serious question? As a business owner, my business is expanding. I'm seeking qualified individuals from within the USA and from overseas. Good talent is hard to find. I am also hiring 2 low-end employees for each 1 high-end educated employee desired. The two I do hire will only produce.75 of the expected output of 1 good employee. This sucks.
It saddens me to say this but work ethic is sorely lacking in America today. The college professors I interact with on a daily basis confirm that the kids entering college today have not recieved a proper education, their brains are mush. THey aren't stupid, they just have never been challenged and grown and developed their brains. They can tell you about Global Warming, yet nothing about American History. They have been seriously ripped off by an educational system that has constantly lowered standards in order to get everyone passing the standardized tests.
To a large extent, kids these days are seriously lacking critical thinking skills. You want proof? Well, lets just watch the replies to this post and see how this gets moderated.
There is no need for AD hominem attacks. I actually think we're much closer to agreement with each other than disagreement.
From your first linked file:
Current uranium market tension is sometimes perceived as a proof of immediate scarcity for uranium resources. This is hopefully not the case, and one should avoid mixing short-term supplies tightening and long term resource availability.
We have uranium available from numerable sources. We know how to refine it and purify it. We're pretty good at it. We can generate uranium at costs far below $1000/lb which translates to $0.005 or half a penny per kw/h of electricity produced.
Nevertheless, The USA has developed Yucca Mountain and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) nuclear waste storage facilities. These are large enough to store enough nuclear waste to power the globe for the next 10,000 years.
The big problem that you cite is with the Brits and nuclear technology. In the wake of World War 2 the United States government enacted legislation which prohibited any other nations from receiving the scientific bounty derived from the Manhattan Project. This meant that despite the participation of British scientists in the project, Britain received none of the benefits of the research. The year after the United States' first successful nuclear bomb test in July of 1945, the British government decided that they too must develop a nuclear program in order to maintain their position as a world power. This pilot project eventually developed into the Windscale Nuclear plant.
Had the USA done more to help other friendly nations, I think that the nuclear issues you discuss could have been avoided. Dealing with nuclear energy is a nasty business, but at least we know where the pollutants go. Done right, I don't see any other option as being able to provide the value for the cost.
Biofuels are a joke. We're seeing that here in the USA. Completely impractical. Carbon offsets is just Bio-friendly terminology that translates into "You can't save the earth unless you're willing to make other people sacrifice."
Until you mentioned Hanford, I had completely forgotten about it. Living in the Midwest, we have lots of Nuclear power plants and we used to have plenty of cheap electricity.
Not any more.
I get so angry at the mindless chanting of the "Global Warming" crowd that is unwilling to discuss, or even consider, the only viable energy alternative that could provide the needed electricity without adding to "Greenhouse Gases". Then I realized that the NIMBY crowd (Not In My Back Yard) has really gone BANANAs (Build Almost Nothing, Anywhere Near Anything).
So, I get tired of my $200 electricity bill. I go out and purchase and replace all the lights in my house with the all-new energy efficient bulbs. My utility bill dropped by $30. Then I read the story about these bulbs containing mercury and then read the comments on how it is somehow CORPORATE AMERICA's fault for trying to force us to buy these new light bulbs when the old ones did just fine...
You can't help but get to a point where you realize that these folks are just pathological. They don't want solutions, they want problems! They feel good having to deal with these problems because they can feel good educating people about these problems, but if we actually SOLVE these problems, then what the heck would they do for a living? Find more problems! Scream Louder!
Slashdot Mirror
We are Systems Administrators. Yes we can read other peoples emails, we can look into other peoples personal lives, we could be stealing corporate data and selling it, we could grab the spreadsheets from HR and commit ID theft. We could do a lot of things... but we don't.
We don't because we have integrity. And frankly, that isn't the career path we chose.
Do we snoop? Sure, sometimes we do. I get to do it professionally as an auditor. I look to see what files are stored where on the network, and what access controls are in place to protect them. I capture data leaving the firewall to see if sensitive information is leaving the building, and I frequently get a glimpse into other peoples lives.
Want to know what I found?
I found out that most normal people live normal lives. If I see something I'm not supposed to see, then "I never saw it."
Guess what, secretaries, er, Executive Assistants have been monitoring the events and the goings-on in the office for decades. They know when forging the boss' signature is called for (in fact, I had a secretary that could sign my name so well that even I could not tell the difference). They know when to keep their lips zipped, how to be discrete.
Guess who else monitors my life - the Janitor! He has access to every room in the building. Same with the maintenance guys.
Do these people have a written code of conduct?
None that I'm aware of.
I think my wife is on Microsoft Birth Control, because every week she has to apply a new patch.
Actually, all you need is the password hashes. You don't even need to crack the password.
:)
Example:
When you go to login to your server, you type your username and password into your machine and click 'submit'. Your machine sends a request to the server to login (no credentials are sent). The server responds with a nonce, (nonsense data/random garbage). Your PC takes the password you typed in and hashes it, then it uses the hash to encrypt the nonce it received from the server. It combines the encrypted nonce with the username and transmits it back to the server. The server does a lookup on the username, takes its private copy of your hashed password (stored on the server) and uses that hash to decrypt the nonce it sent you, then compares the decrypted nonce to the nonce it sent out to you. If it matches, you must have typed in the correct password and you are issued an access ticket; your actual password is never sent across the network.
The weak spot is the hash. If I have gathered the hashes from the server, I do not need to go through the trouble of cracking them. I have written a custom login tool that all you do is type in the username. The program looks up the hashed password associated with the username and uses the hashed value to encrypt the nonce.
At this point, it doesn't matter if your password is 1 character or 14 random characters, if I have your hashes, you're toast. Cracking the passwords is simply an academic exercise at that point.
Regards,
Joel Helgeson
Flamebait? This is a direct quote from "A Few Good Admin's"
Ok, so I made it up...
My apologies to Col. Nathan Jessep.
Son, we live in a world that has firewalls, and those firewalls have to be maintained by men with root access. Whose gonna do it? You? You, with your blogging buddies? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You whine about port blocking and you curse the administrators. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: That blocking ports, while frustrating, probably saves bandwidth... And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves packets. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at LAN parties, you want me on that firewall, you need me on that firewall. We use words like source address, port 80, destination... We use these words as the backbone of an access control list. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain why I block access to YouTube to a man who points and clicks on the very network that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a whitepaper, and create your own web 2.0 app. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
Based on your reply, I now see your point was the exact opposite from how I initially interpreted it.
It drives me nuts when people interpret correlation as causation. Just because two events may correlate does not mean one causes the other.
Tsk tsk, this comment should be modded down as hate speech.
Calling people names is clearly hateful.
By that logic, there is a clear intersect between people who eat carrots and death. Over the past 10,000 years, 100% of the people who ate a carrot at some point in their life, they eventually died.
Forget the fact that, ahem, well, everyone dies. Because carrots and death intersect, and I hate carrots.
Lets ban carrots.
Since when is Islam a race? Islam is a religion whose practitioners are called Muslims. Muslims can be of any race. Just like followers of Christianity are called Christians, and there are Christians of every skin color. So, cursing a religion does NOT make a person RACIST, nor does it qualify as HATE SPEECH.
I think you might be very surprised at how much value comes out of running these types of simulations. I work in the tech field and that side of the story is easy to imagine but as I worked with economists and academia it gave me a new appreciation that I would like to share with you.
Pre-Y2k, the government wanted to plan for the "Systemic Perturbations" that could come out of the Y2k bug. The US Gov't said to its top economists, military leaders: "Assume it is going to be bad, the worst case scenario." For once, perhaps the first time in history, we knew beforehand WHAT the vertical shock to the system was going to be and on what date and time it was going to happen. This gave the discussion a very real sense of importance because it wasn't hypothetical. In disaster planing, you don't know what the vertical shock is going to be-- think of a rock hitting a pond, you don't know how big the rock will be or when, where it will hit, and from a planning scenario it doesn't matter because what you need to plan for is how to deal with the huge splash it creates and the waves and ripples it creates. Once you have created plans to deal with the splash and ripples, what they term as "System Perturbations" you are then ready for any vertical shock (rock hitting pond) to the system. The rock can hit anywhere and be any size. We already know how to respond to the splash and run all the ripples to ground.
So, with Y2k, the Pentagon engaged with a global financial firm of Cantor Fitzgerald to plan for the vertical shock of Y2k and what sort of rule set resets are going to take place. If Y2k was going to be big, Banks failing, power outages, trading stops, mass chaos, martial law... what would be the GLOBAL impact of such massive chaos. Interestingly, Cantor Fitzgerald stated: "I think we've seen this before, in China, with SARS."
Huh? What does China and SARS have to do with Y2k bug?
The Chinese healthcare system, and by extension their entire government was very closed about revealing any of their internal problems. When the SARS outbreak happened, Chinese authorities ignored the problem. When SARS started spreading, the World Health Organization (WHO) started inquiring with China about the outbreaks and extent of the spread within China. China flat denied that any problem existed. When people started dying, the WHO shut down all flights leaving certain Chinese provinces suspected of spreading SARS. This had a DIRECT impact on the Chinese economy and government.
The Chinese immediately responded. "AH, roo mean SARS! Well, we have very much SARS!" To this day, there are police stationed at the airport that will approach any passenger and take their temperature on the spot. If you are running a fever, or you don't look 100% healthy, you don't fly. You've just won an extended 3 day vacation with all expenses paid by YOU because they don't ever want to run the risk of spreading disease and having their airports shut down again. This also started the Chinese equivalent of the CDC to start cooperating with the WHO, which is why we know about the H5N1 "Bird Fru" virus years before it has become a viable threat to humans.
The real lesson here was this: China received a vertical shock to their system. The direct result of that shock was rapid changes taking place to China's political system, changes that NEVER could have come about on their own absent the external influence. An external event causing internal change. Internal change that never could have come internally. Rapid policy changes that forever alter the way the country interacts with the outside world. This was huge.
The correlation to Y2k was the recognition that the vertical system shock to the global system would create unheard of system perturbations. The output of which would cause a permanent global policy change that would forever alter the rules by which governments interact with each other and how each government interacts with its own citizens. External events driving internal change.
Wel
How do I know this? I work with and interact with them on a regular basis. It is against the law for the FBI to spy on American Citizens. Everything they do is structured such that individual agents cannot operate autonomously. In fact, the checks and balances that are in place with this system are more restrictive and hold the agents more accountable than has ever been in the past. Theoretically, 10 years ago a Special Agent In Charge could set up an illegal wiretap on his wife's lover, or whatever or whomever they chose, and as long as he didn't record the events, "it never happened."
With this system, there are logs created of who looked at what, when, where, why, and how.
Another example, besides the current issue of the "eavesdropping network", is the former Carnivore system. All Carnivore was was a packet capture program to sniff Ethernet packets, basically the same thing as Ethereal, WireShark or TCPdump except with all useful features disabled. This packet capture software would ONLY capture traffic transmitted to or from ONE SPECIFIC network address. It was a severely crippled packet capture software that LIMITED what the FBI could see based upon the network addresses specified in the warrant.
Nevertheless, "privacy advocates" went nuts, and people flamed the FBI for *GHASP* keeping current with technology and wiretaps and having the ability to track cybercrime.
Security experts scratched their collective heads because any network admin who knows anything about packet capture could plainly see that Carnivore was a severe restriction on the FEDs collective ability to monitor network traffic.
Here in the USA in the 1980's we made a major push to get science taught to school kids. Every one of us kids thought we would grow up to become astronauts. The result is now we have a generation of cynics who still can't point out planet Earth on a map of the globe.
Does this mean they now have email?
Information is compartmentalized that very few people have access to all the data. No single agent can just arbitrarily listen in on your calls or data.
It sounds like the system was patterned after the existing NCIC records database the FBI maintains. The database keeps a record of every query made and who made it, why, and the case number for the case that they were investigating. Much like your credit report. If you apply for credit, the creditor must get your authorization to pull your credit report and their access is recorded on that credit report. You can go see who's been looking at your credit by pulling your own credit report. You can access your FBI file by submitting a FOIA request. If 'Very Special Agent Mulder' decides to check you out without proper authorization, his career is over.
I have tremendous faith and confidence in our professional law enforcement agencies. They really do take privacy seriously in order to maintain our trust. We may bitch about it a lot, but in reality they have more interesting people to watch than you or I.
Ever since Grand Theft Auto introduced shooting up fiber optic lines into their, uh, game play sequence, urm...
This is not an official release or opinion from Microsoft, per se. This is the opinion of Steve Riley who, in my opinion, has a tenuous grasp on security to begin with. That the "War on Terror" is overblown: in what sense? That is a pretty broad statement. I do not believe that we will ever see a "Cyber Jihad" because the worst I've ever seen come out of the Salafi Jihadists is flaming posts on message boards. Piss those guys off and they'll type in all-caps then figure out a way to blow themselves up.
Does this mean we ignore software security? Uh, no.
I started questioning Steve Riley's advise when he stated that explaining that ROI == economics in information security. While easily confused by some, economics is quite different than accounting. Now, perhaps I can see the difference because I've been studying the issue with colleagues that have PhD's in economics. Nevertheless, this tells me that he is not an expert in these issues and has not studied them.
It appears to be working... I mean, when was the last time you read an article that was written about product documentation?
(Would this be considered meta-data?)
-joel
Sounds like a whiny teenager / abusive spouse:
I SWEAR its gonna be different this time! I PROMISE! Come ON, PLEASE!
Just give me some money! I'm not gonna make the same mistake I made last time.
As I peer into my crystal ball, I can see.... that you, sir, are going to do just fine out there in this world!
I should have clarified, I am only referring to High School kids. I recall an article I read where in one High School, EVERY GIRL that tried out for Cheerleading got in. Oh political correctness, what hath you wrought?
I much prefer "Jedi Mind Trick".
As for the Flynn Effect; I support that theory, it makes sense. However, there is no correlation between IQ and intelligence, wisdom, or common sense. I have met a lot of high IQ people that are complete idiots. There is no conversion chart between IQ and Wisdom.
I equate IQ to voltage, wisdom to amperage. A high voltage and low aperage makes your hair stand up and feel kinda funny (kinda like high IQ people make you feel). Low voltage at high amperage, that'll get some work done. High voltage AND high amperage? Now THATS what I'm talkin about!
But it really is different now. :)
- art-piece,-because-it's-mine-and-I'm-special', it is time for you to go out into the really real world and fight the EVIL CORPORATE AMERICA that sees no value in your self esteem and would rather hire a foreign worker that can discern between a racial comment and a racist comment, a worker who can solve a quadratic equation AND separate their glass and plastic bottles."
More than just a generation gap. I'm still young enough to bridge this gap.
I need to start with an example:
If you want to get a scientific research grant funded today, or any grant for that matter, all you need is to do is to somehow tie it into global warming. Seriously. The city of Boston received public grant money for its wireless mesh network that will sit atop city light poles by stating that the purpose of the network was to "provide city-wide internet access and to use the nodes to monitor air pollution and climate change."
Did you just say "CLIMATE CHANGE?" DING DING DING DING DING!
That is the MAGIC PHRASE!
What I am saying is irrespective of whether humans can change the weather. I pass no judgment on that issue. What I am saying is that if you want a grant to get funded, you need to somehow tie it in to global climate change and it'll be an instant winner. Absent that, well, good luck!
Well, back when you were going through school in the 70's, my friend, the magic phrase was "fix education". But the problem was in that very assumption that there was something that needed fixing. Sure, there were under-performing districts, and socio-economic influences, but rather than address these issues directly, lets get a grant funded to research new methods of teaching that which has been taught and perfected over millennia such that everyone can pass a standardized achievement test...
And thus began the effort to raise the level of educational standards by lowering passing scores until the least among us are now getting a passing grade.
I'd like to propose a toast:
"TO MEDIOCRITY!"
"I now, do hereby declare, that everyone is now equal. Johnny made the baseball team, and so did everyone else. Nobody learned anything but everybody sure does feel good about themselves! Now, with this healthy attitude of 'I-could-crap-on-a-canvas-and-sell-it-as-a-modern
You don't need to know ANYTHING about American History to compile C++, but what you do need is critical thinking skills. With the kids of today, if the answers aren't in the back of the textbook or freely available through Google, they go into vapor lock.
The University students I refer to are primarily at the University of Minnesota. The UofM is a stellar college. I am very good friends with numerous Professors and Grad students, as well as those who have graduated and gone on to teach at other Universities. These professors now teaching at these other universities, all over the nation, they are astounded at how 'mentally soft' the recent round of students are. Again, they're not stupid, they've just never been challenged!
If you can get an A in class without even trying hard, where is the incentive to try hard? IF kids can now go up for the school baseball team, no matter how much they excel or suck, everyone who tries out for the team gets a spot; they just keep splitting the teams and adding coaches like its some sort of extracurricular PE class JUST to make sure everyone "FEELS GOOD" and nobody gets their precious feelings hurt. What do you think this does to the students that REALLY DO excel at sports? It tells them that "While you may have talent, it doesn't matter because we don't want to run the risk of having Johnny get his feelings hurt so you might as well just give up your dreams of a sports scholarship now because our politically correct sports policy virtually guarantees that we will never win a state championship or even raise you up to a level that you'll get noticed at." (Heck, if there is nothing else I learned in school, at least I learned to appreciate the subtle beauty of a run-on sentence.)
The entire educational system retards the mental growth and development of the bright kids until everyone is at the same dysfunctional level. Then the administrators keep lowering the bar on the "Standards" just to keep everyone moving through the system. The teachers hate it too! They want to teach math, science, history, reading and writing but instead they are given a State mandated outline of what the kids will be tested on this year so make sure they know these particular facts... so the teachers feed them the list of questions and answers to make sure they can pass. What have the kids learned?
They learned how to memorize answers.
If you, the person reading this, you, the one who just graduated can look around you and see this, then I think you have a chance.
If you look around you at your peers and see nothing wrong then I weep for you.
I personally think you can get a better education at a Community College than you can get at most of the Ivy League institutions of today (I'm speaking of a 4 year degree, not grad school). First, if you get into an Ivy League college, that alone tells me that you have worked your entire young life working for a good college entrance exam, which means learning the answers to questions. There are more Nobel prize winning professors at an Ivy League school, you bet, but can anyone show me the correlation between winning a Nobel Prize and being a good teacher? There isn't any! The teachers who teach at a Community College, from my experience, have real world experience and have decided to teach classes for the sheer joy of teaching, and they teach from experience, which is by far the best teacher.
As far as "What is the output of 1 good worker?", it depends. Here, I'll quote supreme court justice Potter Stewart: "...it is hard to define, but I know it when I see it."
How is this a serious question? As a business owner, my business is expanding. I'm seeking qualified individuals from within the USA and from overseas. Good talent is hard to find. I am also hiring 2 low-end employees for each 1 high-end educated employee desired. The two I do hire will only produce .75 of the expected output of 1 good employee. This sucks.
It saddens me to say this but work ethic is sorely lacking in America today. The college professors I interact with on a daily basis confirm that the kids entering college today have not recieved a proper education, their brains are mush. THey aren't stupid, they just have never been challenged and grown and developed their brains. They can tell you about Global Warming, yet nothing about American History. They have been seriously ripped off by an educational system that has constantly lowered standards in order to get everyone passing the standardized tests.
To a large extent, kids these days are seriously lacking critical thinking skills. You want proof? Well, lets just watch the replies to this post and see how this gets moderated.
-joel
ADHDTV anyone?
From your first linked file:
We have uranium available from numerable sources. We know how to refine it and purify it. We're pretty good at it. We can generate uranium at costs far below $1000/lb which translates to $0.005 or half a penny per kw/h of electricity produced.
Nevertheless, The USA has developed Yucca Mountain and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) nuclear waste storage facilities. These are large enough to store enough nuclear waste to power the globe for the next 10,000 years.
The big problem that you cite is with the Brits and nuclear technology. In the wake of World War 2 the United States government enacted legislation which prohibited any other nations from receiving the scientific bounty derived from the Manhattan Project. This meant that despite the participation of British scientists in the project, Britain received none of the benefits of the research. The year after the United States' first successful nuclear bomb test in July of 1945, the British government decided that they too must develop a nuclear program in order to maintain their position as a world power. This pilot project eventually developed into the Windscale Nuclear plant.
Had the USA done more to help other friendly nations, I think that the nuclear issues you discuss could have been avoided. Dealing with nuclear energy is a nasty business, but at least we know where the pollutants go. Done right, I don't see any other option as being able to provide the value for the cost.
Biofuels are a joke. We're seeing that here in the USA. Completely impractical. Carbon offsets is just Bio-friendly terminology that translates into "You can't save the earth unless you're willing to make other people sacrifice."
Until you mentioned Hanford, I had completely forgotten about it. Living in the Midwest, we have lots of Nuclear power plants and we used to have plenty of cheap electricity.
Not any more.
I get so angry at the mindless chanting of the "Global Warming" crowd that is unwilling to discuss, or even consider, the only viable energy alternative that could provide the needed electricity without adding to "Greenhouse Gases". Then I realized that the NIMBY crowd (Not In My Back Yard) has really gone BANANAs (Build Almost Nothing, Anywhere Near Anything).
So, I get tired of my $200 electricity bill. I go out and purchase and replace all the lights in my house with the all-new energy efficient bulbs. My utility bill dropped by $30. Then I read the story about these bulbs containing mercury and then read the comments on how it is somehow CORPORATE AMERICA's fault for trying to force us to buy these new light bulbs when the old ones did just fine...
You can't help but get to a point where you realize that these folks are just pathological. They don't want solutions, they want problems! They feel good having to deal with these problems because they can feel good educating people about these problems, but if we actually SOLVE these problems, then what the heck would they do for a living? Find more problems! Scream Louder!
-sigh-