I'm a permanent resident of the US and a Canadian citizen, and thus can't vote in elections in either country (since you have to be both a citizen and maintaining a physical residence within their borders to vote in either country's elections). I'll absolutely resume my civic duty as soon as I can become a US citizen, which is in a little less than two years.
IMHO for a lot of these things at the legal extremes of what they could do, but didn't, the problem isn't that they weren't doing them, it's that they had the ability to do them in the first place.
The law shouldn't have large sections that are only used when you piss off a federal agent / judge.
(The cynical side of me says it's because they give superiors and judges a reason to pass their opinion as judgement on someone without any real evidence...)
Really? I still use Gnome 2 + (highly customized) Compiz and love it. I'm a bit scared that it'll effectively go out of support on the next Ubuntu version, but I'll switch to a distro that likes me then.
More than this, the US has very weak labor laws among first-world countries, and a lower minimum wage than most as well. Unions are one way of fixing this problem; the other is legislation, but the problem with that is that the interests of current career politicians are firmly in the pockets of corporations.
Cory Moll was reported missing today by his family. They also expressed concern about a chrome statue placed in front of the local Apple store in Cory's exact image and dimensions. An Apple store representative said, "We wished to express our gratitude for Mr. Moll's concerns and have thus erected this statue, and will do so for any other employee who does the same."
1. Not that I really use it but I'm pretty sure there's a Finder in classic Gnome. 2. Personally, if I'm using multiple desktops, I only want to Alt-Tab between the ones on the current desktop anyway. But there's Shift-Alt-Tab which goes between all windows. 3. Compiz implements this in Window Previews. 4. I don't know about this one, but one assumes you could simply create a shell script...
Still not a fan of Unity. I'm going to try it several more times while 11.04 is the current version of Ubuntu, but if they do make it the only option available by default (and thus, inevitably, the only option supported, at least in the way that whenever there is a problem with "Classic Gnome", Ubuntu people will ask you if you can just switch to Unity), I won't be an Ubuntu user any longer.
This was my reaction too. What kind of university scoffs at someone using what started out as an academic operating system? Hell, my community college had a supercomputer node running some variety of Unix (I forget which), which we hacked on for a short while as part of our studies.
IT support shouldn't have to directly support Linux but the network should be platform agnostic at the least.
The rest of us are still expanding our skills, finding jobs, studying in school, and generally doing our thing. It's just really easy for it to look like the loudest represent us all. (This applies to more than just geekdom.)
It would be possible to use a scheme where only encrypted data is stored in whatever database abstraction is used on the cloud side, and only store the private key necessary for decryption on a server stored at and exclusively under the control of the government, but then you're pretty much losing most of the benefits of cloud computing anyway since you have to maintain that keyserver.
Plus it probably wouldn't scale very well since you'd be doing a hell of a lot of on-the-fly encryption and decryption, which would require a fairly large amount of CPU power on the keyserver side.
Yeah, I don't have a problem with virtualization, but I don't think that's what this article described. I just think that they should avoid using something like, say, EC2 for important or sensitive business.
An organization as big as a national government should have its own IT department. Using cloud services basically means you're outsourcing your IT to the company providing the cloud services. For a government, this is not a good idea. They store all sorts of sensitive information about their citizens, to which the cloud provider would ultimately have access (and Dropbox proves this happens regardless of what they say, as for a large part they need it to diagnose issues with their service). Mission critical applications, of which a government would have at least a few, would also have a single point of failure if hosted on a cloud provider.
Ultimately it's about short term cost savings versus long term problems. A government should be thinking long term pretty much all the time.
We cook your food. We pick up your trash. We are your doctors and sysadmins. We manufacture your weapons and security bunkers. We are your IT and shipping departments. We distribute the mail and clean your cum-stained hotel rooms. DO NOT FUCK WITH US.
^ This is Anonymous, only they have no actual leadership. It's a bunch of random people doing whatever the fuck they want, and occasionally one of them has an idea that the others like, and they roll with it.
Treating them like they're Al Qaeda or something is just looking for trouble.
Long story short, if someone is telling you "Technology x will do a-z!" and someone else shouts back "Technology x is worthless!", you are better off not believing either of them.
One of the great life lessons I've learned is that you should take what the loudest people one one side of an issue say, combine it with what the loudest people on the other side say, then completely ignore them both and listen to the quieter sane ones.
You'd think they'd be using public key encryption to verify both the machine and the ATM network (which would mean, if done right, it wouldn't matter what transport you used).
I wouldn't try that very often; some machines will seize up and refuse to operate further when they find a banknote until a service person from the company comes to reset it, and then you'll have some 'splainin to do.
You're crazy. We've reversed transactions at ATMs with our bank where the ATM didn't spit out the money but marked it as a successful transaction; they gave us a temporary credit and a month later sent us a letter saying their investigation found that our report was accurate and that the credit was now permanent. With something like this, I'd imagine the investigation would be pretty easy; just track which machines the guy refilled.
C'mon. There's cynical and then there's not doing the research.
With smaller districts comes greater access to office because the barrier to entry is greatly reduced.
The real problem is that no current politician WANTS a low barrier to entry. They all want to keep the constituencies that they bought with their hard-earned money. And you better believe that the two major parties want the barrier to entry as high as possible.
So we have a chicken and egg problem: Citizens want smaller districts, but in order to do so, they need to get one of their representatives into office. Unfortunately, they can't, because the district is too large to run one of their candidates...
Wow, blame the victim much? I'm a permanent resident and therefore cannot vote. If I could, I would (and I absolutely will once I become a citizen in a couple of years). As for contacting my representatives, well, rocking the boat would not be good for my situation seeing as how I have to file again with USCIS in a few months. Any idea how easy it is to take someone's green card?
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I'm a permanent resident of the US and a Canadian citizen, and thus can't vote in elections in either country (since you have to be both a citizen and maintaining a physical residence within their borders to vote in either country's elections). I'll absolutely resume my civic duty as soon as I can become a US citizen, which is in a little less than two years.
IMHO for a lot of these things at the legal extremes of what they could do, but didn't, the problem isn't that they weren't doing them, it's that they had the ability to do them in the first place.
The law shouldn't have large sections that are only used when you piss off a federal agent / judge.
Why is the federal government so in love with polygraph machines given the scientific community's near-complete dismissal of polygraphs as valid?
(The cynical side of me says it's because they give superiors and judges a reason to pass their opinion as judgement on someone without any real evidence...)
Really? I still use Gnome 2 + (highly customized) Compiz and love it. I'm a bit scared that it'll effectively go out of support on the next Ubuntu version, but I'll switch to a distro that likes me then.
More than this, the US has very weak labor laws among first-world countries, and a lower minimum wage than most as well. Unions are one way of fixing this problem; the other is legislation, but the problem with that is that the interests of current career politicians are firmly in the pockets of corporations.
Cory Moll was reported missing today by his family. They also expressed concern about a chrome statue placed in front of the local Apple store in Cory's exact image and dimensions. An Apple store representative said, "We wished to express our gratitude for Mr. Moll's concerns and have thus erected this statue, and will do so for any other employee who does the same."
1. Not that I really use it but I'm pretty sure there's a Finder in classic Gnome.
2. Personally, if I'm using multiple desktops, I only want to Alt-Tab between the ones on the current desktop anyway. But there's Shift-Alt-Tab which goes between all windows.
3. Compiz implements this in Window Previews.
4. I don't know about this one, but one assumes you could simply create a shell script...
Still not a fan of Unity. I'm going to try it several more times while 11.04 is the current version of Ubuntu, but if they do make it the only option available by default (and thus, inevitably, the only option supported, at least in the way that whenever there is a problem with "Classic Gnome", Ubuntu people will ask you if you can just switch to Unity), I won't be an Ubuntu user any longer.
This was my reaction too. What kind of university scoffs at someone using what started out as an academic operating system? Hell, my community college had a supercomputer node running some variety of Unix (I forget which), which we hacked on for a short while as part of our studies.
IT support shouldn't have to directly support Linux but the network should be platform agnostic at the least.
*cough*usenet*cough*
Whatever it is, Ron Jeremy has prior art.
The rest of us are still expanding our skills, finding jobs, studying in school, and generally doing our thing. It's just really easy for it to look like the loudest represent us all. (This applies to more than just geekdom.)
Not if Ubuntu removes Gnome / Compiz as an option available by default. I think they're going to piss off a lot of people with that move.
It would be possible to use a scheme where only encrypted data is stored in whatever database abstraction is used on the cloud side, and only store the private key necessary for decryption on a server stored at and exclusively under the control of the government, but then you're pretty much losing most of the benefits of cloud computing anyway since you have to maintain that keyserver.
Plus it probably wouldn't scale very well since you'd be doing a hell of a lot of on-the-fly encryption and decryption, which would require a fairly large amount of CPU power on the keyserver side.
Yeah, I don't have a problem with virtualization, but I don't think that's what this article described. I just think that they should avoid using something like, say, EC2 for important or sensitive business.
An organization as big as a national government should have its own IT department. Using cloud services basically means you're outsourcing your IT to the company providing the cloud services. For a government, this is not a good idea. They store all sorts of sensitive information about their citizens, to which the cloud provider would ultimately have access (and Dropbox proves this happens regardless of what they say, as for a large part they need it to diagnose issues with their service). Mission critical applications, of which a government would have at least a few, would also have a single point of failure if hosted on a cloud provider.
Ultimately it's about short term cost savings versus long term problems. A government should be thinking long term pretty much all the time.
Interesting. If true, they probably are like Anonymous, and it's still just as stupid to think that one can kill a label with military force.
^ This is Anonymous, only they have no actual leadership. It's a bunch of random people doing whatever the fuck they want, and occasionally one of them has an idea that the others like, and they roll with it.
Treating them like they're Al Qaeda or something is just looking for trouble.
One of the great life lessons I've learned is that you should take what the loudest people one one side of an issue say, combine it with what the loudest people on the other side say, then completely ignore them both and listen to the quieter sane ones.
Yeah, the whole thing about BoA? That's why we don't bank with BoA. :^P
You'd think they'd be using public key encryption to verify both the machine and the ATM network (which would mean, if done right, it wouldn't matter what transport you used).
I wouldn't try that very often; some machines will seize up and refuse to operate further when they find a banknote until a service person from the company comes to reset it, and then you'll have some 'splainin to do.
You're crazy. We've reversed transactions at ATMs with our bank where the ATM didn't spit out the money but marked it as a successful transaction; they gave us a temporary credit and a month later sent us a letter saying their investigation found that our report was accurate and that the credit was now permanent. With something like this, I'd imagine the investigation would be pretty easy; just track which machines the guy refilled.
C'mon. There's cynical and then there's not doing the research.
With smaller districts comes greater access to office because the barrier to entry is greatly reduced.
The real problem is that no current politician WANTS a low barrier to entry. They all want to keep the constituencies that they bought with their hard-earned money. And you better believe that the two major parties want the barrier to entry as high as possible.
So we have a chicken and egg problem:
Citizens want smaller districts, but in order to do so, they need to get one of their representatives into office. Unfortunately, they can't, because the district is too large to run one of their candidates...
In fact, I wouldn't be shocked if they released a disc with a game that crashes upon installation, promising a patch "when it's ready".
Wow, blame the victim much? I'm a permanent resident and therefore cannot vote. If I could, I would (and I absolutely will once I become a citizen in a couple of years). As for contacting my representatives, well, rocking the boat would not be good for my situation seeing as how I have to file again with USCIS in a few months. Any idea how easy it is to take someone's green card?