Except that nobody in this day and age actually calls it "special clearance" or if they do then it was outside of the community that I was in. If they are going back and talking to elementry school teachers then it is not an SSBI that is being conducted since that only goes back 10 years or until the age of 18 which ever is less and that is the usual standard for SCI materials. Of course, this is not to say that a SAP might require above and beyond but then my point still stands about talking to elementray school teachers about what you were like at that age still stands: it is completely meaningless unless they knew you as an older teenager or adult.
You are speculating incorrectly. I held a special clearance and they went back and talked to elementary school teachers, old friends, etc... If they come up with concerns, they dig further than they did with me.
What do you mean by "special clearance" though? For an SSBI they aren't going to go back and talk to elementary school teachers because there would be no point in doing that unless you knew those same teachers when you were older. When they do an SSBI for military personnel that are fresh out of high school they don't go back and talk to elementary school teachers unless they knew the subject in the recent past since someones opinion of a child is unlikely to give any indication as to their trustworthiness as an adult.
They always accuse you of using drugs. Always. They also try to beat you into a confession. Always.
Generally speaking the odds of a random American having tried drugs was about 42% back in 2008 and I'm sure that on a generational basis that number is likely higher or lower. Plus if you know where someone grew up or is currently living that affects the odds as well. So from that perspective it kind of makes sense to push someone on the issue - if they will not admit to doing something once or twice (that they really don't care about) then what else are they likely to keep close lipped that can actually be used against them?
Although oddly enough I've actually seen more traffic going to my Flickr account that was being driven by searches on Flickr. So it looks like they might have tweaked the searching under the hood as well which is nice, but the new UI on the other hand, cluttered.
Tell me again why we should care about the use of chemical weapons in Syria? I don't see a reason to intervene.
Realistically the reason that the US cares about the use of chemical weapons in Syria is because there is fear that AQ or one of the other radical groups operating in Syria could get their hands on them for use outside of Syria. If Syria is resorting to the use of chemical weapons then they are becoming more liberal with their transport and they can fall out of their control. If this was a false flag operation of some sort then Syria has already lost control of chemical weapons in which case someone needs to go in their to re-establish control of them. Beyond that the US doesn't want to get involved unless one of their allies in the region pulls them into the quagmire which hasn't been happening. As someone already pointed out, the missiles that hit Turkey gave the US casus belli to attack Syria and even with the war hawks in Congress and the Senate beating the war drums they've avoided doing anything overt thus far.
Education in Japan, Work in USA, and wife from France.
I'm not sure if that is sarcasm nor not. The education system in Japan is largely based upon rote memorization and is known be counter productive in terms of creativity. The United States are up there on the list of countries with the most working hours and least amount of vacation time taken.
There are actually a lot of reports of the B-2 Spirt being reported as Black Triangle UFOs and there is some plausible evidence out there that there might be another experimental airframe out there that is triangular in shape.
Why can't dolphins do intelligent and interesting things without people applying unfounded anthropomorphic qualities to their behavior?
On the same token, who said the anthropomorphic being applied aren't unfounded? There is a lot of evidence out there to support the fact that some animals aren't "dumb" so it's not unreasonable to speculate that some of them might be capable of communicating using mechanisms that we could both anthropomorphise and be complete incapable of understanding.
With regards to the argument that the "Language Log" is trying to make about signature whistles not acting like names, well, they are guilty of assuming that dolphin "grammar" would act the same as human languages. For all intensive purposes they are falling for the anthropomorphic as a result. Or to put in another way "Dolphins aren't following the rules of human grammar, therefore, signature whistles can't be names."
This is false. He said, and I quote, ""He was lying, He clearly has over-inflated his position, he has over-inflated his access and he's even over-inflated what the actually technology of the programs would allow one to do. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."
It turns out that he was in fact NOT lying, and Rogers WAS lying by saying Snowden was lying.
Or Snowden might be exaggerating what the software could do because he wasn't actually authorized to use it (i.e. he drew conclusions based upon the training materials on SharePoint) and Rogers is downplaying how poor the security at the NSA actually is.
If Snowden was a system administrator at the NSA then there would have been no reason for him to be using the tools that the intellegence analysts would have been using and I would like to think that he would not have had need to know to actually use the systems even if he had knowledge of them. So he likely was not in a position to be fully briefed about the actual capablities of the systems. Even if he was being truthful about being a "infrastructure analyst" (i.e. black hat) there still wouldn't have been much of a reason for him to the tools of an intellegence analyst.
Don't forget that some of those sites could also just be access servers that allow the relevent software to be run and might not be the servers doing the actual probing.
A lot of the major internet backbone cable go through the United States or allied countries. If you and a tap on one of those it wouldn't be too hard to actually suck large percentages of the worlds daily telecommunications traffic. Some of the earlier slides that were released effectively implied that is exactly what they are going as well.
Odds are enough information has already been released that any analyst worth their paycheck already has a pretty good idea as to how most of the NSA systems work. I'd also be willing to be that most software engineers with a web background out there already have a pretty good idea how they are doing things. This is of course assuming that other people didn't already figure this out before hand.
Plus, all of the NSA systems are apparently vunerable to the good old fashioned dead drop since they can't monitor non-electronic systems. That's also not exactly a secert to anyone either.
It's shocking to discover that the government can actually accomplish anything, as opposed to wasting $800 million in taxpayer money with nothing to show for it.
Assuming they are telling the truth about 50+ plots being foiled, then another way to look at it is that it costs them around $16 million per foiled plot. That sounds like a big number but in light of September 11 that is comparitively cheap to the $100 billion plus finaincal impact.
I could have been a bit clearer on the logic, but basically, governments historically have a longer continuity of existence than private corporations which allows for the powers of compound interest to apply to build up the buffer. $1,000,000 deposited at 2.5% interest in 1776 with no additional deposits would be $347,981,453.54 today, actual buying power not withstanding.
Very few companies have really proven that they can stand the test of time yet and the list of ones that people thought would and failed is quite extensive. Not that the same thing doesn't apply to national governments but regional governments (mostly cities) can have records that date back hundereds of years as a matter of course.
Massachusetts resident here and the taxes here are actually less than they are in states near by such as New York or Connecticut. Plus, there are a lot of people that regularly do such things as start voter-initiated ballot questions to get rid of the income tax. As far as services go, I've lived in other states that claimed to be (or actually were) fiscally conservative and you got what you paid for when it came to government services.
As for Detroit, politicians past promised future generations' money to support retirees, a very easy thing to do.
Which is how pension funds are not supposed to be run in the first place. If you run a pension correctly it should work more like a 401(k) in that the money goes into an account that you then don't touch until a certain date. For large organizations you can calculate out how much you need to fund an employee's retirement long before they even retire. The government would actually be the best suited to pensions since they can build up enough of a buffer over time that they should effectively be immune to fluctuations in the market and could eventually hit a point where they wouldn't even need to pay in to the pension accounts again. In short, bad fiscal management is the problem, no pensions themselves.
It's really the only explanation I can think of for the popularity of a book about a teenage wizard in the over-20's demographics.
Assuming you mean people that are 21 to 29 years old, then the popularity has a lot to do with the fact that "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" stone came out in 1997 and it took ten years for the series to be published. Someone that was 10 when the first book came out would have been 20 when the last one did so effectively the entire generation grew up with the Harry Potter series.
So chartered companies are bad but individuals running businesses is good?
Again, I never said that chartered companies were bad. You keep trying to read a percived bias into very short comments.
Although since you bring up the question of ethics, I would argue that there is an ethical difference since an individual can be held responsible for their actions but a large organization cannot. Although that is a very long discussion in and of itself and it's one that people have been arguing back and forth for a long time now.
The goat herd [sic] tending his flock 2000 years ago was a businessmen. He was out there every day busting his ass protecting that herd from predators, thieves, the elements, and the stupidity of the live stock itself.
No, he was a tradesman and there might not have been any profit motive involved depending upon the size of the herd and how remote the individual was from a center of trade.
Now you want to say you're only against modern business and not some idealized and naive conception of older business models?
I never said that and you should go back and re-read my comments if you don't believe me. I said that business in and of itself is not necessary for human survival which is a true statement. Trade and businesses might help to ensure human survival is easier, but they aren't necessary from that standpoint.
All trade is business and all business is trade, idiot.
All businesses may engage in some form of trade, but not all trade is business. The difference is that business is conducted between organized groups of individuals (i.e. chartered companies) where as trade can be conducted as the group or individual level.
Maybe you should study some Roman history - corporations, interest rates - these things have been around far longer than a couple of hundred years.
Alright, you get a half point since Roman collegia do share some properties with the modern chartered companies that I was thinking of. The chartered companies date to 17th century though, so my point still stands. One of the key features of modern corporations is that they can fail but the individual assets of the participates in that corporation are protected.
I suspect you haven't studied much history since what most people think of "business" in the modern standpoint is only a couple hundred years old. Most of your examples have more to do with "trade" as opposed to "business" per se. Trade and trading has ways been around and is an effective aspect of human survival, but business in itself is not necessary for human survival.
That should read, "a large paycheck". There are certainly plenty of labs that have money available for coding, but you'll be earning about 25-35K in most cases. As someone who was on the opposite side of this conundrum (I was trying to hire a programmer), I was frustrated to find that noone with significant coding skills was willing to work for that amount of money.
I'm not sure where you are in the world, but assuming the United States, $25,000 to $35,000 is roughly half of the average entry level programmer salary of about $55,000. So you are looking for a skilled worker for less than someone fresh out of college could make? I suspect you have some unrealistic expectations, or you might need to get a bit more creative about things. I know quite a few programmers that would be willing to pick up a side job for those rates but don't expect them to work the same hours as a full time employee.
If you want to do something interesting with your coding skills and earn a wage, you can, but be prepared to take a huge pay cut, like the rest of us have.
There is a huge difference between a paycut (the rule of thumb is that non-profits pay 15% less then industry on avearge) and a significant paycut that will impact your standard of living.
How's that compare to terrestrial radio though? My understanding is that the artists are paid a royalty based upon the number of plays on the radio, but a large station might broadcast to hundreds of thousands of people. If you were to break down to the cost per person listening on the radio to a streaming site the the royalty might actually end up being more in that case.
It should be noted that this could be a really good way to get enough of a taste for academia to see if you really want to pursue it as a career and a three year project is more than enough to get a taste for things. Plus, if you decide you don't want to do it, afterwards such things do look good on a CV or resume so returning from industry is not that difficult.
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Except that nobody in this day and age actually calls it "special clearance" or if they do then it was outside of the community that I was in. If they are going back and talking to elementry school teachers then it is not an SSBI that is being conducted since that only goes back 10 years or until the age of 18 which ever is less and that is the usual standard for SCI materials. Of course, this is not to say that a SAP might require above and beyond but then my point still stands about talking to elementray school teachers about what you were like at that age still stands: it is completely meaningless unless they knew you as an older teenager or adult.
You are speculating incorrectly. I held a special clearance and they went back and talked to elementary school teachers, old friends, etc... If they come up with concerns, they dig further than they did with me.
What do you mean by "special clearance" though? For an SSBI they aren't going to go back and talk to elementary school teachers because there would be no point in doing that unless you knew those same teachers when you were older. When they do an SSBI for military personnel that are fresh out of high school they don't go back and talk to elementary school teachers unless they knew the subject in the recent past since someones opinion of a child is unlikely to give any indication as to their trustworthiness as an adult.
They always accuse you of using drugs. Always. They also try to beat you into a confession. Always.
Generally speaking the odds of a random American having tried drugs was about 42% back in 2008 and I'm sure that on a generational basis that number is likely higher or lower. Plus if you know where someone grew up or is currently living that affects the odds as well. So from that perspective it kind of makes sense to push someone on the issue - if they will not admit to doing something once or twice (that they really don't care about) then what else are they likely to keep close lipped that can actually be used against them?
Although oddly enough I've actually seen more traffic going to my Flickr account that was being driven by searches on Flickr. So it looks like they might have tweaked the searching under the hood as well which is nice, but the new UI on the other hand, cluttered.
Tell me again why we should care about the use of chemical weapons in Syria? I don't see a reason to intervene.
Realistically the reason that the US cares about the use of chemical weapons in Syria is because there is fear that AQ or one of the other radical groups operating in Syria could get their hands on them for use outside of Syria. If Syria is resorting to the use of chemical weapons then they are becoming more liberal with their transport and they can fall out of their control. If this was a false flag operation of some sort then Syria has already lost control of chemical weapons in which case someone needs to go in their to re-establish control of them. Beyond that the US doesn't want to get involved unless one of their allies in the region pulls them into the quagmire which hasn't been happening. As someone already pointed out, the missiles that hit Turkey gave the US casus belli to attack Syria and even with the war hawks in Congress and the Senate beating the war drums they've avoided doing anything overt thus far.
Education in Japan, Work in USA, and wife from France.
I'm not sure if that is sarcasm nor not. The education system in Japan is largely based upon rote memorization and is known be counter productive in terms of creativity. The United States are up there on the list of countries with the most working hours and least amount of vacation time taken.
There are actually a lot of reports of the B-2 Spirt being reported as Black Triangle UFOs and there is some plausible evidence out there that there might be another experimental airframe out there that is triangular in shape.
I understand a lot of the illiteracy in the world, that one has always puzzled me...
Pointing such things out does not make you appear couth, but rather more of a churl.
Why can't dolphins do intelligent and interesting things without people applying unfounded anthropomorphic qualities to their behavior?
On the same token, who said the anthropomorphic being applied aren't unfounded? There is a lot of evidence out there to support the fact that some animals aren't "dumb" so it's not unreasonable to speculate that some of them might be capable of communicating using mechanisms that we could both anthropomorphise and be complete incapable of understanding.
With regards to the argument that the "Language Log" is trying to make about signature whistles not acting like names, well, they are guilty of assuming that dolphin "grammar" would act the same as human languages. For all intensive purposes they are falling for the anthropomorphic as a result. Or to put in another way "Dolphins aren't following the rules of human grammar, therefore, signature whistles can't be names."
This is false. He said, and I quote, ""He was lying, He clearly has over-inflated his position, he has over-inflated his access and he's even over-inflated what the actually technology of the programs would allow one to do. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."
It turns out that he was in fact NOT lying, and Rogers WAS lying by saying Snowden was lying.
Or Snowden might be exaggerating what the software could do because he wasn't actually authorized to use it (i.e. he drew conclusions based upon the training materials on SharePoint) and Rogers is downplaying how poor the security at the NSA actually is.
If Snowden was a system administrator at the NSA then there would have been no reason for him to be using the tools that the intellegence analysts would have been using and I would like to think that he would not have had need to know to actually use the systems even if he had knowledge of them. So he likely was not in a position to be fully briefed about the actual capablities of the systems. Even if he was being truthful about being a "infrastructure analyst" (i.e. black hat) there still wouldn't have been much of a reason for him to the tools of an intellegence analyst.
Don't forget that some of those sites could also just be access servers that allow the relevent software to be run and might not be the servers doing the actual probing.
A lot of the major internet backbone cable go through the United States or allied countries. If you and a tap on one of those it wouldn't be too hard to actually suck large percentages of the worlds daily telecommunications traffic. Some of the earlier slides that were released effectively implied that is exactly what they are going as well.
Odds are enough information has already been released that any analyst worth their paycheck already has a pretty good idea as to how most of the NSA systems work. I'd also be willing to be that most software engineers with a web background out there already have a pretty good idea how they are doing things. This is of course assuming that other people didn't already figure this out before hand.
Plus, all of the NSA systems are apparently vunerable to the good old fashioned dead drop since they can't monitor non-electronic systems. That's also not exactly a secert to anyone either.
It's shocking to discover that the government can actually accomplish anything, as opposed to wasting $800 million in taxpayer money with nothing to show for it.
Assuming they are telling the truth about 50+ plots being foiled, then another way to look at it is that it costs them around $16 million per foiled plot. That sounds like a big number but in light of September 11 that is comparitively cheap to the $100 billion plus finaincal impact.
The logic here isn't clear at all.
I could have been a bit clearer on the logic, but basically, governments historically have a longer continuity of existence than private corporations which allows for the powers of compound interest to apply to build up the buffer. $1,000,000 deposited at 2.5% interest in 1776 with no additional deposits would be $347,981,453.54 today, actual buying power not withstanding.
Very few companies have really proven that they can stand the test of time yet and the list of ones that people thought would and failed is quite extensive. Not that the same thing doesn't apply to national governments but regional governments (mostly cities) can have records that date back hundereds of years as a matter of course.
Massachusetts resident here and the taxes here are actually less than they are in states near by such as New York or Connecticut. Plus, there are a lot of people that regularly do such things as start voter-initiated ballot questions to get rid of the income tax. As far as services go, I've lived in other states that claimed to be (or actually were) fiscally conservative and you got what you paid for when it came to government services.
As for Detroit, politicians past promised future generations' money to support retirees, a very easy thing to do.
Which is how pension funds are not supposed to be run in the first place. If you run a pension correctly it should work more like a 401(k) in that the money goes into an account that you then don't touch until a certain date. For large organizations you can calculate out how much you need to fund an employee's retirement long before they even retire. The government would actually be the best suited to pensions since they can build up enough of a buffer over time that they should effectively be immune to fluctuations in the market and could eventually hit a point where they wouldn't even need to pay in to the pension accounts again. In short, bad fiscal management is the problem, no pensions themselves.
It's really the only explanation I can think of for the popularity of a book about a teenage wizard in the over-20's demographics.
Assuming you mean people that are 21 to 29 years old, then the popularity has a lot to do with the fact that "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" stone came out in 1997 and it took ten years for the series to be published. Someone that was 10 when the first book came out would have been 20 when the last one did so effectively the entire generation grew up with the Harry Potter series.
So chartered companies are bad but individuals running businesses is good?
Again, I never said that chartered companies were bad. You keep trying to read a percived bias into very short comments.
Although since you bring up the question of ethics, I would argue that there is an ethical difference since an individual can be held responsible for their actions but a large organization cannot. Although that is a very long discussion in and of itself and it's one that people have been arguing back and forth for a long time now.
The goat herd [sic] tending his flock 2000 years ago was a businessmen. He was out there every day busting his ass protecting that herd from predators, thieves, the elements, and the stupidity of the live stock itself.
No, he was a tradesman and there might not have been any profit motive involved depending upon the size of the herd and how remote the individual was from a center of trade.
Now you want to say you're only against modern business and not some idealized and naive conception of older business models?
I never said that and you should go back and re-read my comments if you don't believe me. I said that business in and of itself is not necessary for human survival which is a true statement. Trade and businesses might help to ensure human survival is easier, but they aren't necessary from that standpoint.
All trade is business and all business is trade, idiot.
All businesses may engage in some form of trade, but not all trade is business. The difference is that business is conducted between organized groups of individuals (i.e. chartered companies) where as trade can be conducted as the group or individual level.
Maybe you should study some Roman history - corporations, interest rates - these things have been around far longer than a couple of hundred years.
Alright, you get a half point since Roman collegia do share some properties with the modern chartered companies that I was thinking of. The chartered companies date to 17th century though, so my point still stands. One of the key features of modern corporations is that they can fail but the individual assets of the participates in that corporation are protected.
I suspect you haven't studied much history since what most people think of "business" in the modern standpoint is only a couple hundred years old. Most of your examples have more to do with "trade" as opposed to "business" per se. Trade and trading has ways been around and is an effective aspect of human survival, but business in itself is not necessary for human survival.
That should read, "a large paycheck". There are certainly plenty of labs that have money available for coding, but you'll be earning about 25-35K in most cases. As someone who was on the opposite side of this conundrum (I was trying to hire a programmer), I was frustrated to find that noone with significant coding skills was willing to work for that amount of money.
I'm not sure where you are in the world, but assuming the United States, $25,000 to $35,000 is roughly half of the average entry level programmer salary of about $55,000. So you are looking for a skilled worker for less than someone fresh out of college could make? I suspect you have some unrealistic expectations, or you might need to get a bit more creative about things. I know quite a few programmers that would be willing to pick up a side job for those rates but don't expect them to work the same hours as a full time employee.
If you want to do something interesting with your coding skills and earn a wage, you can, but be prepared to take a huge pay cut, like the rest of us have.
There is a huge difference between a paycut (the rule of thumb is that non-profits pay 15% less then industry on avearge) and a significant paycut that will impact your standard of living.
How's that compare to terrestrial radio though? My understanding is that the artists are paid a royalty based upon the number of plays on the radio, but a large station might broadcast to hundreds of thousands of people. If you were to break down to the cost per person listening on the radio to a streaming site the the royalty might actually end up being more in that case.
It should be noted that this could be a really good way to get enough of a taste for academia to see if you really want to pursue it as a career and a three year project is more than enough to get a taste for things. Plus, if you decide you don't want to do it, afterwards such things do look good on a CV or resume so returning from industry is not that difficult.