Re:854,000 people currently holding a TS clearance
on
Top Secret America
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Clearances expire if they aren't being actively used. (although I imagine it'd be easier to reactivate an old clearance than it would be to get a new one)
You're right about the "need to know". Top Secret is only a starting point. After that, you get special clearances for specific projects. Even the names of some of these clearances are secret. I know of a guy that lost *all* of his clearances simple for listing his special clearances on his resume. Which makes finding people interesting. If you're a contractor needing people with QizBang clearance, you're not allowed to advertise for people with that clearance, and they aren't allowed to say they have it. ***
*** It's been twenty years since I've done anything that needed clearances. The DoD may have now have a secret clearing house where spy employers and employees can meet. If not, it should start one.
I have two arcade machines, and I bought both because not only did I like the game play, but also the art of the game. Both are color vector graphic machines (Tempest & Star Trek), and both have beautiful displays. IMHO, the display on Tempest still can't be outdone with an LCD or plasma system. I've also studied the schematics and there is considerable art in the way the designers pushed their extremely limited systems.
It won't. There've been battery holders that locked out incorrect installation for years, but if the positive bump on the cell isn't long enough, or is too wide, it doesn't work. Unfortunately, it's rechargeable cells that tend to fudge the size specifications.
All they have to do is give better bribes to the FSB and the MPAA can get all the customer records from the Russian company. In fact that might be the business model:
Sell unauthorized copies of movies (Profit)
Get your website blocked everywhere
Sell your customer information the the MPAA (Profit)
Who would give their credit card number to a site of questionable legality? I suppose you could give a one time use CC number, but wouldn't you be in constant worry that the site might forget to pay off its local officials, get raided, and have said local officials sell all the records to the MPAA/RIAA?
The "job" of any long term organization is to grow so that it will be around tomorrow. (There were a few Utopian societies that didn't get this, they're no longer around.)
Apply this to Government, Church, and Universities. There's a Darwinian evolution going on here, organizations that adapt and grow survive and out compete the ones that don't.
If you let the GUI drive the backend, you'll get designs with a "Read the User's Mind" button, and the implementation left for the backend developers.
At least where I work, most of the time the backend has already been designed, and the data has been populated from other GUIs. I'm given the task of taking some information from an Oracle database, merged with some from LDAP, then produce some report that makes sense. I can only use what's already in the databases, and sometimes I have to tell the user they can't have what they want because the information just isn't available.
... The competition only focused on the GUI exclusively, but no infrastructure. Theirs looked much prettier than mine. They got the nod, and I simply walked.
I've found the best GUI's have pretty pictures, and a "Read the User's Mind" button. Those designs are always the best. I leave the mind reading subroutines to the backend programmers. (:-)
More than you imagine. In Africa, cell phones are the first telephone infrastructure in place, because wiring people's houses is much more difficult than setting up a few towers.
In China, after bottles and such were banned from sports stadiums, people began throwing their cell phones at the officials when they made what the crowd thought was a bad call.
I have a bunch of unopened IRIX 6.x installation sets gathering dust in my basement. I'm pretty sure they require activation codes like everything else SGI.
And yet, the CIA was able to explode a Soviet natural gas pipeline simply by inserting some code into the pipeline control software the Soviets were stealing from the Canadians. "The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space,..."
I think you're spot on and I've never heard it phrased this way.
Next Question: How do we get regular people to imagine themselves solving difficult problems? Quiz shows, Detective Novels, and some science fiction have smart people as heroes.
A microVAX is a little too small unless it's racked, but I used to have a VAX 11/725 in the small wheeled case that was coffee table sized. Alas, during a move I had to part ways with it because the power supply had died. sniff, sniff, I miss that beast. It had 25MB fixed disk and 25MB removable, 3MB of RAM and ran BSD 4.2. In MIPS, it was about as fast as a IBM PC/XT (but had a linear address space)
They also need to find a way to transform the products of the reaction into usable hydrogen fuel – currently the hydrogen atoms are split into constituent protons and electrons that must be recombined into complete atoms and molecules.
That doesn't make too much sense, but if it's correct, they are splitting water into mono-atomic hydrogen and mono-atomic oxygen, which will spontaneously recombine into H2O if it's not kept separated. Keeping the hydrogen and oxygen separate is a big problem. (without expending more energy to push stuff through barriers.)
They also need to find a way to transform the products of the reaction into usable hydrogen fuel – currently the hydrogen atoms are split into constituent protons and electrons that must be recombined into complete atoms and molecules.
What's up with this? Last time I checked, a naked proton will find an electron, combine into hydrogen and then form up with other hydrogen atoms into H2 spontaneously. Perhaps, they meant the hydrogen spontaneously recombines with the Oxygen released when water is split.
Rarely do whole corporation lobby representatives. Usually they hire actual people to do the job.
We could make it illegal to hire someone to represent you to your representatives, but how would you enforce it?
(Cable companies have had their own employees attend local town/city/county meetings so that the actual residents wouldn't be able to speak.)
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Seeing all the other holes they've poked in the First Amendment, it should be possible to interpret this as a right for redress of your own, personal, grievances, not someone else's for hire. (You'd still be able to lobby on behalf of dead relatives...)
The authors say that basically there's too much noise in the pulsars. I just skimmed the article, but I didn't see anything that said why the pulsars are noisy, nor did they answer the question if that noise can be fixed, i.e. using a space based telescope (light or radio), or does the noise come from interstellar sources.
A FedEx plane was hijacked in 1994 with the express purpose of crashing it into a building. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedEx_Flight_705
The crew was able to subdue him, so it really didn't make much news.
Sure, the hijacker never crashed it into a building, thus there was no building collapse. Any idiot could see that a successfully hijacked jet makes a great weapon.
The flip side, is that the students that didn't want to be there, weren't. I remember many kids in High School that disrupted class because they didn't want to be there.
I don't know about the elementary and high school, but Purdue University students really do have an advantage in the job market they wouldn't have if it had been named Northern Indiana University. (which is what it is)
Naming a school just seems like it would make for more inspired students than those at PS-1138.
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Clearances expire if they aren't being actively used. (although I imagine it'd be easier to reactivate an old clearance than it would be to get a new one)
You're right about the "need to know". Top Secret is only a starting point. After that, you get special clearances for specific projects. Even the names of some of these clearances are secret. I know of a guy that lost *all* of his clearances simple for listing his special clearances on his resume. Which makes finding people interesting. If you're a contractor needing people with QizBang clearance, you're not allowed to advertise for people with that clearance, and they aren't allowed to say they have it. ***
*** It's been twenty years since I've done anything that needed clearances. The DoD may have now have a secret clearing house where spy employers and employees can meet. If not, it should start one.
Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one
-- AJ Leibling
I have two arcade machines, and I bought both because not only did I like the game play, but also the art of the game. Both are color vector graphic machines (Tempest & Star Trek), and both have beautiful displays. IMHO, the display on Tempest still can't be outdone with an LCD or plasma system. I've also studied the schematics and there is considerable art in the way the designers pushed their extremely limited systems.
If it works reliably, that's pretty neat.
It won't. There've been battery holders that locked out incorrect installation for years, but if the positive bump on the cell isn't long enough, or is too wide, it doesn't work. Unfortunately, it's rechargeable cells that tend to fudge the size specifications.
If all they are offering is a "chance" of Saturday delivery, the post office wouldn't need to have more than a small Saturday fleet. (:-)
Excellent point. How many people verify that Amazon.com has the rights to sell the movie downloads they do?
Who would give their credit card number to a site of questionable legality? I suppose you could give a one time use CC number, but wouldn't you be in constant worry that the site might forget to pay off its local officials, get raided, and have said local officials sell all the records to the MPAA/RIAA?
The "job" of any long term organization is to grow so that it will be around tomorrow. (There were a few Utopian societies that didn't get this, they're no longer around.)
Apply this to Government, Church, and Universities. There's a Darwinian evolution going on here, organizations that adapt and grow survive and out compete the ones that don't.
If you let the GUI drive the backend, you'll get designs with a "Read the User's Mind" button, and the implementation left for the backend developers.
At least where I work, most of the time the backend has already been designed, and the data has been populated from other GUIs. I'm given the task of taking some information from an Oracle database, merged with some from LDAP, then produce some report that makes sense. I can only use what's already in the databases, and sometimes I have to tell the user they can't have what they want because the information just isn't available.
... The competition only focused on the GUI exclusively, but no infrastructure. Theirs looked much prettier than mine. They got the nod, and I simply walked.
I've found the best GUI's have pretty pictures, and a "Read the User's Mind" button. Those designs are always the best. I leave the mind reading subroutines to the backend programmers. (:-)
More than you imagine. In Africa, cell phones are the first telephone infrastructure in place, because wiring people's houses is much more difficult than setting up a few towers.
In China, after bottles and such were banned from sports stadiums, people began throwing their cell phones at the officials when they made what the crowd thought was a bad call.
I have a bunch of unopened IRIX 6.x installation sets gathering dust in my basement. I'm pretty sure they require activation codes like everything else SGI.
And yet, the CIA was able to explode a Soviet natural gas pipeline simply by inserting some code into the pipeline control software the Soviets were stealing from the Canadians. "The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space,..."
I think you're spot on and I've never heard it phrased this way.
Next Question: How do we get regular people to imagine themselves solving difficult problems? Quiz shows, Detective Novels, and some science fiction have smart people as heroes.
It's Q*bert, and one development title was @!#?@!?. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qbert
Wow, they discovered the order of functions. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation)
A microVAX is a little too small unless it's racked, but I used to have a VAX 11/725 in the small wheeled case that was coffee table sized. Alas, during a move I had to part ways with it because the power supply had died. sniff, sniff, I miss that beast. It had 25MB fixed disk and 25MB removable, 3MB of RAM and ran BSD 4.2. In MIPS, it was about as fast as a IBM PC/XT (but had a linear address space)
They also need to find a way to transform the products of the reaction into usable hydrogen fuel – currently the hydrogen atoms are split into constituent protons and electrons that must be recombined into complete atoms and molecules.
That doesn't make too much sense, but if it's correct, they are splitting water into mono-atomic hydrogen and mono-atomic oxygen, which will spontaneously recombine into H2O if it's not kept separated. Keeping the hydrogen and oxygen separate is a big problem. (without expending more energy to push stuff through barriers.)
They also need to find a way to transform the products of the reaction into usable hydrogen fuel – currently the hydrogen atoms are split into constituent protons and electrons that must be recombined into complete atoms and molecules.
What's up with this? Last time I checked, a naked proton will find an electron, combine into hydrogen and then form up with other hydrogen atoms into H2 spontaneously. Perhaps, they meant the hydrogen spontaneously recombines with the Oxygen released when water is split.
Rarely do whole corporation lobby representatives. Usually they hire actual people to do the job.
We could make it illegal to hire someone to represent you to your representatives, but how would you enforce it?
(Cable companies have had their own employees attend local town/city/county meetings so that the actual residents wouldn't be able to speak.)
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Seeing all the other holes they've poked in the First Amendment, it should be possible to interpret this as a right for redress of your own, personal, grievances, not someone else's for hire. (You'd still be able to lobby on behalf of dead relatives...)
The authors say that basically there's too much noise in the pulsars. I just skimmed the article, but I didn't see anything that said why the pulsars are noisy, nor did they answer the question if that noise can be fixed, i.e. using a space based telescope (light or radio), or does the noise come from interstellar sources.
A FedEx plane was hijacked in 1994 with the express purpose of crashing it into a building. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedEx_Flight_705 The crew was able to subdue him, so it really didn't make much news.
Sure, the hijacker never crashed it into a building, thus there was no building collapse. Any idiot could see that a successfully hijacked jet makes a great weapon.
The flip side, is that the students that didn't want to be there, weren't. I remember many kids in High School that disrupted class because they didn't want to be there.
does the name of the school really mean anything?
I don't know about the elementary and high school, but Purdue University students really do have an advantage in the job market they wouldn't have if it had been named Northern Indiana University. (which is what it is)
Naming a school just seems like it would make for more inspired students than those at PS-1138.