For many of them, including municipal police, no, I don't wonder at all.
Boston College isn't a municipal police force.
That aside, Boston Police offers a VERY healthy salary increase for each step up the ladder. It is extremely common for Boston Police officers to have at least a bachelors degree or higher because of it.
My father-in-law faced one of the prosecutors in a tax case once. She pulled a lot of the same crap then, harassing witnesses, changing the story she was trying to prosecute, etc.
Exactly. What should be disappointing is not that the case was dismissed, but that much of what went on probably happens in most criminal cases, and it was only because of the political power Stevens wields that the judge decided to call prosecutors on it.
If you want a decent parallel: selective/discretionary enforcement of speed/traffic laws. You can't possibly stop everyone- which works nicely as an excuse for both why you didn't stop the rich white guy, and why you did stop the guy with the turban. Add in "officer's discretion" on whether to write a ticket or warning for a nice cherry on top of the "tools to discriminate" pie.
Also, we'd probably be able to tell exactly what the purpose of this rocket was: ICBM or satalite. That can drastically alter the type and severity of potential US/UN retaliation.
And why would the US be interested in spending millions of dollars to retrieve and analyze the parts, only to find out that the missile was in fact for satellite purposes?
It'd be some serious egg on the face of the world if North Korea really is just trying to get a satellite into orbit. Has anyone except the US and South Korean military confirmed that the launch was a failure?
*thinks back to all the times UK posters have bitched and moaned about "rights", not visiting the US, etc*
Always found it amusing in the first place given they've gone completely fucking bonkers with speed cameras, CCTV, "anti social behavior" laws, and of course the UK has much of the same anti-terror bullshit. Meanwhile, Cambridge (mass) just rejected cameras that were going to be installed by Homeland Insecurity over privacy issues. The backlash is gaining; in the UK, it never started.
Our politicians seem to be trying desperately to go the way of England with taxes, but the decision to split from England ~230 years ago appears to have been an excellent one nonetheless.
Comcast denied that it was considering a similar penalty,
Maybe not for RIAA stuff, but for the first time in a DECADE (I'm including Mediaone, Roadrunner, AT&T, and Comcast- ie all the various incarnations of the same cable company here) they're suddenly strictly enforcing their policies regarding hosting services. If you have any incoming SMTP or WWW traffic, expect to be canned if you haven't been already...even if it is for personal use.
It astounds me that people get bent out of shape about bittorrent throttling, but not terms of service that force you to be a "consumer" of the internet; the ToS specifically ban "web discussion forums" and internet email lists (I was running neither.)
The hockey stick graph [wikimedia.org] is a lie because it makes it seem as if the normal CO2 level was almost constant. This cannot be further from the truth.
Both graphs show exactly the same thing- that we're in an upswing with CO2 levels, but that the upswing this time is significantly higher than every other cycle, going back half a million years. Also, notice something funny about the last few thousand years temperature-wise? Namely that the pattern is also broken there?
You're an utter moron, as is whoever modded you up. Time to start metamoderating again.
The only Burmese contact he had at the time was Skyping with his ex-girlfriend, a student at a nearby liberal arts school who organized protests of greater scope on her campus
Did it occur to you that maybe, just maybe, your roommate was sold out by his "burmese contact"? Skype sniffers can't tell the Burmese government that the other person was the ex-girlfriend of a...I don't know what the fuck is going on in that set of connections, but dude, it's far more likely the guy in Burma is on the take...or someone in his apartment is.
Or maybe you all wildly misinterpreted his mother's "don't make waves" urgings.
Or, are they maybe trying to sell the current phones they have on stock out now, and this is a ploy to sell them faster?
Yup. I bought a 2G 8GB'er from AT&T back when they were selling "refurbished" units. Barely a few months later, the 3G came out.
"Refurbished" goods are a nice little pricing ploy used by a lot of consumer electronics companies. First, they get to sell to a different market- ie people who don't buy new things or have a low 'budget'. Second, they get to clear out old inventory, without hurting their price point; if they sell current iPhones at a cheaper price, the next iPhone will be "more expensive", even if it is the same price the previous model was when it was first released. Last but not least, consumer expectations on product reliability and support are lower on refurbished goods.
A/C compressers in cars don't use much power, though. Maybe 5hp, at most
Look at a power curve for engines some time. At typical RPMs you use not driving aggressively, car engines can only make well under 100hp.
Also, it's a lot more than 5hp; 10-15 is a better estimate.
Still, this pisses me off to no end. CA already has civil-rights-violating emissions laws. You can be stopped and searched at any time for illegal engine modifications, "illegal" being anything that isn't CARB certified. Virtually everything concerning the engine is involved. Air filters, which have fuck-all to do with emissions. Exhaust systems, which provided they are after the catalytic converter, also have fuck-all to do with emissions. If you refuse to consent, you're arrested and your vehicle is impounded.
Meanwhile, Obama opened up the door for per-state emissions instead of setting better federal standards and telling the states to fuck off. I'm all for saving the environment, but not through creating an absolute nightmare of a patchwork of emissions regulations for automakers (not to mention making it impossible to take your vehicle with you if you move from one state to another.)
Yet another example of the Junior Senator From Illinois leaping without thinking.
I know that if the BSA got wind of this, it would all fall on me when they stormed in.
They can't. They love to pretend they can, or they try to strongarm people into letting them do surveys. It's all just evidence gathering for when they sue you later, or use it to extort you into paying massive fines.
If they show up, tell reception not to let them past the waiting room. Call the cops IMMEDIATELY if they won't follow your instructions or requests (your business is private property.) Fetch the highest person in the company, preferably an officer, and tell them the BSA has no legal ability to search without a warrant or court order (which requires a lawsuit) and they need to shoo them away. The BSA should get nothing but the phone number of your lawyer.
Now, on the second part of your question: what to do? It's very simple. Ask your boss. Explain the risk. Include some sort of plan for inventorying and an estimate of how long it'll take. OCS Inventory is a pretty good way to do this if you have more than a dozen or so systems. Possibly include some (qualified) estimates of what it is going to cost to come back in line (remember there are significant volume discounts for things like Office) based on what you've seen before; stick to the facts. Include alternatives such as OpenOffice, but don't get too crazy (ie, don't list "convert to linux" for unlicensed servers as $cost_of_MS_Server in "savings"...factor in some healthy labor estimates AND you have the time to take on such tasks. Don't forget that there is opportunity cost too.)
Lastly: you need to make sure you have BOTH purchase records (receipts/packing slips) and the license files (ie those thingies with the holograms and barcodes) for EVERY PIECE OF SOFTWARE YOU HAVE. The company accountants / office manager can help with part of that. It's going to mean going through a lot of boxes- get a big filing cabinet. If you get any electronically, PRINT THEM IMMEDIATELY, and keep them in a safe place.
At least we're all safe from those evil packages of Sudafed, though!
First, "cold medicines" have been found to be essentially useless. Second, Sudafed is not an allergy medicine- it's a decongestant. Third, there are numerous alternative medicines that achieve the same effect, but they cost slightly more to make. Fourth, I've repeatedly purchased Claratin and other allergy pills without so much as a glance from anyone.
Lastly, the legislation you're talking about was designed to make it harder for meth addicts to make their own meth "at home". Why? Because they kill themselves (and anyone else living in the house/apartment at the time) either by blowing the place up or from breathing in the chemicals involved in the various stages of making the meth...and also in the process, turn the home into a massively contaminated structure that has to be torn down. Hell, even the neighbors nearby are at danger if the wind is blowing the wrong way.
No benefit, readily available alternatives, public safety issue. Closed case to me.
Mosquitoes tend to be fairly localized, dunno about the bats. They might be congregating elsewhere, and need encouragement to hang around in your part of town. Try putting in a bat house on your property, and a bird house or two for good measure. Both require some research on how to locate them for maximum effectiveness; for the bird house, also make sure you have one with the proper size hole for the entrance for whichever species you want to attract (it should be big enough for them, but not big enough for predators.)
I wonder how the performance of this system compares to one of the numerous CO2+odor attractant trapping systems already in use.
My folks have two- and despite that, they still have tons of mosquitoes and the traps take weeks to fill up.
They have $$$ odor cartridges that last barely a week or two, the traps are really gross to empty (and usually full of really angry, hungry mosquitoes), you have to go to the hardware store often to fill the tanks, people steal the machines (they're expensive), the traps are ridiculously unreliable (they don't like getting wet...the idiots used exposed circuit boards and freakin' PC COMPUTER FANS). Nevermind they're burning LNG/propane 24x7 and use at least 30W-40W of electricity; not exactly enlightened from a climate/environmental perspective these days.
If you don't like mosquitoes, build/buy some bird and bat shelters and put 'em up.
Seriously, the populace would be far better served by figuring out what indigenous creatures prey on the mosquitoes, and encouraging their habitat. If there aren't any, carefully try an introduction of bats / birds. Careful meaning "find out if they like to eat anything else that doesn't spread malaria."
Around here in the US, you can actually buy "bat boxes" that come with instructions on finding the best location. You have to leave it up for a couple months, but eventually, bam, you've got your own personal furry little mosquito vacuum...and they are damned efficient at it.
That would be the smart solution, but instead, we have local/city/state governments spewing chemicals into the air...
Forcing the legality of gay marriage in Massachusetts (Mass. supreme court vs. majority of the state's voters, I believe.)
More like, "Mass. supreme court AND state constitution vs. plurality of the state's voters"
Fixed that for ya (MA resident here.)
Southern Confederacy's desire to secede.
Oh christ. It wasn't a "desire to secede", it was "unwillingness to accept that black people were 'men'".All of the southern states accepted the US Constitution when they formed under the union. When the rest of the country told them that black people were in fact men, the hicks revolted. And who do you think powered and controlled that revolution? The southern "people", even if you count out the black population? Of course not. It was the 1800's version of today's corporate farms- because they were the ones benefiting from slave labor.
No shit, sherlock. Thanks to someone like you in every Slashdot story about orbital debris, every single Slashdot reader knows about PlanetES. It's not insightful, it's not informative. The manga and anime series were very popular. It's mentioned in the Wikipedia articles on the relevant subjects.
This is roughly akin to mentioning "24" in any article on Slashdot about terrorism.
Just because we don't consider it worth our health to use nasty chemicals to reclaim metals from scrap boards, doesn't mean no one should want to do it.
Actually, it does, given that here in the 1st world, we have the technology and knowledge to reclaim the metals without putting hundreds of thousands of people in immediate danger, and with probably far greater efficiency in terms of recovery amounts and emissions per quantity recovered. That's the first piece of the pie.
The second piece of the pie: in case you hadn't noticed, we all inhabit the same planet. Those nasty chemicals, smoke, etc...they don't magically go away just because they were created on a country far away by people who look different.
If this is the case, does this mean all major antivirus packages have these things? Have any been found "clean" by deep inspection of the installer etc?
For those of us who have systems with patient study data, this is a Big Fucking Deal. Luckily, we have firewalls involved, but still...
E-Ink screens have a front layer that is very thin glass. They're incredibly sensitive to even general shock or pressure on the screen. Go read the mobileread.com forums, there are tons of reports of people literally just setting a reader down on a table and the screen breaking or developing dead segments.
There's no way in hell a soldier would be able to physically protect the device enough, unless it came with a completely hard shell of some sort.
I'm sure the military branches use their own methods, which are even resistant to NSA spying
The entire point of the NSA is to secure government (and thus military) communications. DES, hello? That was developed so that the government could send shit privately, not for you and me.
The NSA takes charge of development of all the various devices used, and probably gives recommended policy and procedure too. For example, secure communications between embassies? That gear was designed by the NSA, as were the protocols for programming them. Same goes for the encrypted comms on military planes and whatnot. The military uses these fancy boxes to "load" encryption keys into radios and such- and assure their security, chain of custody, blah blah. NSA developed.
If you think the NSA has secret access and is running counter-ops or some bullshit like that, you've been watching too many bad movies and reading too many bad (Tom Clancy) novels.
The mortgage, car, and general financial market make Google look like a tiny little grain of sand. Google makes its money entirely off advertisers (they have no other revenue stream except a tiny amount of money from hosted apps), and guess what is one of the first things companies scale back on?
I work in government IT. Government doesn't have the buying power to hire the trained workstaff to set up an infrastructure like this reliably.
High availability infrastructure is well understood and relatively easy to implement. Maybe they don't where you work, but that doesn't imply nobody in government can. Also, in case you hadn't noticed, there is a very, very large pool of qualified, cheap, available labor right now- it's called "the unemployment line."
There was a case recently where a well-dressed guy with a laptop case passed out on the Red Line. The passengers hit the emergency button, the mid-train conductor came out, took one look at him, said "he's fine, just drunk."
The train went another half a dozen stops, including past Mass General Hospital (literally. The stop is maybe 500 feet from the emergency room), and Park Street, where Boston EMS had been told to meet the train. The train didn't stop at Park- it went all the way to South Station, miles from any hospital.
To put this in context- they had just announced they had put defibrilators in all of the commuter line trains after a guy died because (drumroll please) the conductors refused to stop the train to meet an ambulance crew- they went all the way from Wellesley to South Station, by which time the guy was a vegetable. They got their asses sued, and lost- there should have been manslaughter charges.
Quoting Crocdile Dundee is insightful/informative? *forehead slap*
I don't think I have ever had a joke go over mod's heads and it result in being modded UP...
Years ago, the MBTA had a download that could be installed on older iPods and would give you bus and commuter rail schedules.
Then, a Palm app was "sponsored" by some Palm user group, and the iPod download mysteriously disappeared from their website.
Now, the MBTA is +$6BN in debt and can't afford to do anything like this- or implement the real-time tracking system all the busses are equipped with. It gets worse- Charliecards can't have money or passes loaded on them via the web, nor can you check their balance via the web. The commuter rail system was supposed to switch over a while ago. Student passes? Not able to load them onto Charliecards. They're such fucking morons that when they came up with bike cages that were "secured via charliecard", they neglected to mention that you can't have an existing charliecard granted cage access- not only that, but the bike charliecard can't have anything loaded on it!
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For many of them, including municipal police, no, I don't wonder at all.
Boston College isn't a municipal police force.
That aside, Boston Police offers a VERY healthy salary increase for each step up the ladder. It is extremely common for Boston Police officers to have at least a bachelors degree or higher because of it.
My father-in-law faced one of the prosecutors in a tax case once. She pulled a lot of the same crap then, harassing witnesses, changing the story she was trying to prosecute, etc.
Exactly. What should be disappointing is not that the case was dismissed, but that much of what went on probably happens in most criminal cases, and it was only because of the political power Stevens wields that the judge decided to call prosecutors on it.
If you want a decent parallel: selective/discretionary enforcement of speed/traffic laws. You can't possibly stop everyone- which works nicely as an excuse for both why you didn't stop the rich white guy, and why you did stop the guy with the turban. Add in "officer's discretion" on whether to write a ticket or warning for a nice cherry on top of the "tools to discriminate" pie.
Also, we'd probably be able to tell exactly what the purpose of this rocket was: ICBM or satalite. That can drastically alter the type and severity of potential US/UN retaliation.
And why would the US be interested in spending millions of dollars to retrieve and analyze the parts, only to find out that the missile was in fact for satellite purposes?
It'd be some serious egg on the face of the world if North Korea really is just trying to get a satellite into orbit. Has anyone except the US and South Korean military confirmed that the launch was a failure?
*thinks back to all the times UK posters have bitched and moaned about "rights", not visiting the US, etc*
Always found it amusing in the first place given they've gone completely fucking bonkers with speed cameras, CCTV, "anti social behavior" laws, and of course the UK has much of the same anti-terror bullshit. Meanwhile, Cambridge (mass) just rejected cameras that were going to be installed by Homeland Insecurity over privacy issues. The backlash is gaining; in the UK, it never started.
Our politicians seem to be trying desperately to go the way of England with taxes, but the decision to split from England ~230 years ago appears to have been an excellent one nonetheless.
Comcast denied that it was considering a similar penalty,
Maybe not for RIAA stuff, but for the first time in a DECADE (I'm including Mediaone, Roadrunner, AT&T, and Comcast- ie all the various incarnations of the same cable company here) they're suddenly strictly enforcing their policies regarding hosting services. If you have any incoming SMTP or WWW traffic, expect to be canned if you haven't been already...even if it is for personal use.
It astounds me that people get bent out of shape about bittorrent throttling, but not terms of service that force you to be a "consumer" of the internet; the ToS specifically ban "web discussion forums" and internet email lists (I was running neither.)
The hockey stick graph [wikimedia.org] is a lie because it makes it seem as if the normal CO2 level was almost constant. This cannot be further from the truth.
Both graphs show exactly the same thing- that we're in an upswing with CO2 levels, but that the upswing this time is significantly higher than every other cycle, going back half a million years. Also, notice something funny about the last few thousand years temperature-wise? Namely that the pattern is also broken there?
You're an utter moron, as is whoever modded you up. Time to start metamoderating again.
The only Burmese contact he had at the time was Skyping with his ex-girlfriend, a student at a nearby liberal arts school who organized protests of greater scope on her campus
Did it occur to you that maybe, just maybe, your roommate was sold out by his "burmese contact"? Skype sniffers can't tell the Burmese government that the other person was the ex-girlfriend of a...I don't know what the fuck is going on in that set of connections, but dude, it's far more likely the guy in Burma is on the take...or someone in his apartment is.
Or maybe you all wildly misinterpreted his mother's "don't make waves" urgings.
Or, are they maybe trying to sell the current phones they have on stock out now, and this is a ploy to sell them faster?
Yup. I bought a 2G 8GB'er from AT&T back when they were selling "refurbished" units. Barely a few months later, the 3G came out.
"Refurbished" goods are a nice little pricing ploy used by a lot of consumer electronics companies. First, they get to sell to a different market- ie people who don't buy new things or have a low 'budget'. Second, they get to clear out old inventory, without hurting their price point; if they sell current iPhones at a cheaper price, the next iPhone will be "more expensive", even if it is the same price the previous model was when it was first released. Last but not least, consumer expectations on product reliability and support are lower on refurbished goods.
A/C compressers in cars don't use much power, though. Maybe 5hp, at most
Look at a power curve for engines some time. At typical RPMs you use not driving aggressively, car engines can only make well under 100hp.
Also, it's a lot more than 5hp; 10-15 is a better estimate.
Still, this pisses me off to no end. CA already has civil-rights-violating emissions laws. You can be stopped and searched at any time for illegal engine modifications, "illegal" being anything that isn't CARB certified. Virtually everything concerning the engine is involved. Air filters, which have fuck-all to do with emissions. Exhaust systems, which provided they are after the catalytic converter, also have fuck-all to do with emissions. If you refuse to consent, you're arrested and your vehicle is impounded.
Meanwhile, Obama opened up the door for per-state emissions instead of setting better federal standards and telling the states to fuck off. I'm all for saving the environment, but not through creating an absolute nightmare of a patchwork of emissions regulations for automakers (not to mention making it impossible to take your vehicle with you if you move from one state to another.)
Yet another example of the Junior Senator From Illinois leaping without thinking.
I know that if the BSA got wind of this, it would all fall on me when they stormed in.
They can't. They love to pretend they can, or they try to strongarm people into letting them do surveys. It's all just evidence gathering for when they sue you later, or use it to extort you into paying massive fines.
If they show up, tell reception not to let them past the waiting room. Call the cops IMMEDIATELY if they won't follow your instructions or requests (your business is private property.) Fetch the highest person in the company, preferably an officer, and tell them the BSA has no legal ability to search without a warrant or court order (which requires a lawsuit) and they need to shoo them away. The BSA should get nothing but the phone number of your lawyer.
Now, on the second part of your question: what to do? It's very simple. Ask your boss. Explain the risk. Include some sort of plan for inventorying and an estimate of how long it'll take. OCS Inventory is a pretty good way to do this if you have more than a dozen or so systems. Possibly include some (qualified) estimates of what it is going to cost to come back in line (remember there are significant volume discounts for things like Office) based on what you've seen before; stick to the facts. Include alternatives such as OpenOffice, but don't get too crazy (ie, don't list "convert to linux" for unlicensed servers as $cost_of_MS_Server in "savings"...factor in some healthy labor estimates AND you have the time to take on such tasks. Don't forget that there is opportunity cost too.)
Lastly: you need to make sure you have BOTH purchase records (receipts/packing slips) and the license files (ie those thingies with the holograms and barcodes) for EVERY PIECE OF SOFTWARE YOU HAVE. The company accountants / office manager can help with part of that. It's going to mean going through a lot of boxes- get a big filing cabinet. If you get any electronically, PRINT THEM IMMEDIATELY, and keep them in a safe place.
At least we're all safe from those evil packages of Sudafed, though!
First, "cold medicines" have been found to be essentially useless. Second, Sudafed is not an allergy medicine- it's a decongestant. Third, there are numerous alternative medicines that achieve the same effect, but they cost slightly more to make. Fourth, I've repeatedly purchased Claratin and other allergy pills without so much as a glance from anyone.
Lastly, the legislation you're talking about was designed to make it harder for meth addicts to make their own meth "at home". Why? Because they kill themselves (and anyone else living in the house/apartment at the time) either by blowing the place up or from breathing in the chemicals involved in the various stages of making the meth...and also in the process, turn the home into a massively contaminated structure that has to be torn down. Hell, even the neighbors nearby are at danger if the wind is blowing the wrong way.
No benefit, readily available alternatives, public safety issue. Closed case to me.
Mosquitoes tend to be fairly localized, dunno about the bats. They might be congregating elsewhere, and need encouragement to hang around in your part of town. Try putting in a bat house on your property, and a bird house or two for good measure. Both require some research on how to locate them for maximum effectiveness; for the bird house, also make sure you have one with the proper size hole for the entrance for whichever species you want to attract (it should be big enough for them, but not big enough for predators.)
I wonder how the performance of this system compares to one of the numerous CO2+odor attractant trapping systems already in use.
My folks have two- and despite that, they still have tons of mosquitoes and the traps take weeks to fill up.
They have $$$ odor cartridges that last barely a week or two, the traps are really gross to empty (and usually full of really angry, hungry mosquitoes), you have to go to the hardware store often to fill the tanks, people steal the machines (they're expensive), the traps are ridiculously unreliable (they don't like getting wet...the idiots used exposed circuit boards and freakin' PC COMPUTER FANS). Nevermind they're burning LNG/propane 24x7 and use at least 30W-40W of electricity; not exactly enlightened from a climate/environmental perspective these days.
If you don't like mosquitoes, build/buy some bird and bat shelters and put 'em up.
Seriously, the populace would be far better served by figuring out what indigenous creatures prey on the mosquitoes, and encouraging their habitat. If there aren't any, carefully try an introduction of bats / birds. Careful meaning "find out if they like to eat anything else that doesn't spread malaria."
Around here in the US, you can actually buy "bat boxes" that come with instructions on finding the best location. You have to leave it up for a couple months, but eventually, bam, you've got your own personal furry little mosquito vacuum...and they are damned efficient at it.
That would be the smart solution, but instead, we have local/city/state governments spewing chemicals into the air...
Forcing the legality of gay marriage in Massachusetts (Mass. supreme court vs. majority of the state's voters, I believe.)
More like, "Mass. supreme court AND state constitution vs. plurality of the state's voters"
Fixed that for ya (MA resident here.)
Southern Confederacy's desire to secede.
Oh christ. It wasn't a "desire to secede", it was "unwillingness to accept that black people were 'men'".All of the southern states accepted the US Constitution when they formed under the union. When the rest of the country told them that black people were in fact men, the hicks revolted. And who do you think powered and controlled that revolution? The southern "people", even if you count out the black population? Of course not. It was the 1800's version of today's corporate farms- because they were the ones benefiting from slave labor.
This is roughly akin to mentioning "24" in any article on Slashdot about terrorism.
Come back when you've read Silent Earth, please.
Bah. Silent SPRING, not Silent Earth *forehead slap*
Just because we don't consider it worth our health to use nasty chemicals to reclaim metals from scrap boards, doesn't mean no one should want to do it.
Actually, it does, given that here in the 1st world, we have the technology and knowledge to reclaim the metals without putting hundreds of thousands of people in immediate danger, and with probably far greater efficiency in terms of recovery amounts and emissions per quantity recovered. That's the first piece of the pie.
The second piece of the pie: in case you hadn't noticed, we all inhabit the same planet. Those nasty chemicals, smoke, etc...they don't magically go away just because they were created on a country far away by people who look different.
Come back when you've read Silent Earth, please.
For those of us who have systems with patient study data, this is a Big Fucking Deal. Luckily, we have firewalls involved, but still...
E-Ink screens have a front layer that is very thin glass. They're incredibly sensitive to even general shock or pressure on the screen. Go read the mobileread.com forums, there are tons of reports of people literally just setting a reader down on a table and the screen breaking or developing dead segments. There's no way in hell a soldier would be able to physically protect the device enough, unless it came with a completely hard shell of some sort.
I'm sure the military branches use their own methods, which are even resistant to NSA spying
The entire point of the NSA is to secure government (and thus military) communications. DES, hello? That was developed so that the government could send shit privately, not for you and me.
The NSA takes charge of development of all the various devices used, and probably gives recommended policy and procedure too. For example, secure communications between embassies? That gear was designed by the NSA, as were the protocols for programming them. Same goes for the encrypted comms on military planes and whatnot. The military uses these fancy boxes to "load" encryption keys into radios and such- and assure their security, chain of custody, blah blah. NSA developed.
If you think the NSA has secret access and is running counter-ops or some bullshit like that, you've been watching too many bad movies and reading too many bad (Tom Clancy) novels.
Google as an entity isn't going anywhere and you can't call a business a single point of failure
Except it routinely does. Gtalk, Gmail, and other services have gone down partially, regularly.
trust me, their infrastructure is well built to sustain multiple failure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Big_to_Fail_policy and http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/10/business/fi-carstocks10 and http://housingdoom.com/2008/07/11/fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-too-big-to-fail-too-big-to-bail/
The mortgage, car, and general financial market make Google look like a tiny little grain of sand. Google makes its money entirely off advertisers (they have no other revenue stream except a tiny amount of money from hosted apps), and guess what is one of the first things companies scale back on?
I work in government IT. Government doesn't have the buying power to hire the trained workstaff to set up an infrastructure like this reliably.
High availability infrastructure is well understood and relatively easy to implement. Maybe they don't where you work, but that doesn't imply nobody in government can. Also, in case you hadn't noticed, there is a very, very large pool of qualified, cheap, available labor right now- it's called "the unemployment line."
There was a case recently where a well-dressed guy with a laptop case passed out on the Red Line. The passengers hit the emergency button, the mid-train conductor came out, took one look at him, said "he's fine, just drunk."
The train went another half a dozen stops, including past Mass General Hospital (literally. The stop is maybe 500 feet from the emergency room), and Park Street, where Boston EMS had been told to meet the train. The train didn't stop at Park- it went all the way to South Station, miles from any hospital.
To put this in context- they had just announced they had put defibrilators in all of the commuter line trains after a guy died because (drumroll please) the conductors refused to stop the train to meet an ambulance crew- they went all the way from Wellesley to South Station, by which time the guy was a vegetable. They got their asses sued, and lost- there should have been manslaughter charges.
Quoting Crocdile Dundee is insightful/informative? *forehead slap*
I don't think I have ever had a joke go over mod's heads and it result in being modded UP...
Then, a Palm app was "sponsored" by some Palm user group, and the iPod download mysteriously disappeared from their website.
Now, the MBTA is +$6BN in debt and can't afford to do anything like this- or implement the real-time tracking system all the busses are equipped with. It gets worse- Charliecards can't have money or passes loaded on them via the web, nor can you check their balance via the web. The commuter rail system was supposed to switch over a while ago. Student passes? Not able to load them onto Charliecards. They're such fucking morons that when they came up with bike cages that were "secured via charliecard", they neglected to mention that you can't have an existing charliecard granted cage access- not only that, but the bike charliecard can't have anything loaded on it!