I interviewed iwth one of these groups last summer. Believe it or not, they tolde me that they do a lot of sourcing to american companies who foreign outsource (thus staying off the radar as far as foreign outsourcing concerns go)
More significantly, they use COTS software products, some of which are produced and maintained in countries that are likely to be on the receiving end of the target list. It should be fascinating to find out what happens if they ever try using it against one of those countries.
Incidently, I lost the interview for criticising some of their more glaring security holes. It was an technical architecture position, I thought that was a deliberate ommission to see if I knew what I was doing. It turns out that they are not simply too lazy to follow procedure, they are most clearly opposed to it.
Why, I cannot say, but it appeared to me at least that it was pressure from a few key people, rather than a general attitude, most of the low level techies seemed to appreciate teh need for more security and were quite frustrated by the lack of concern.
I know, after all the flap about junior's cronyism, and poor hiring practices, it was just so perfect a setup for a joke about reforming the CIA's "retired in place" managers, though it should be noted that most of those managers in question were hired when senior was in charge. Just my luck I attracted the attention of the only SlashDot reader without a sense of humor.
Goss has a tough haul ahead of him, the CIA's worst problem, really, is the competition from StratFor and other private firms (it's a little known, but thriving industry) for top talent. (see this reprint in Free Republic from the New York Times magazine http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/897621/po sts)
The really talented analysts and field personnel can make a lot more money in private industry (last november, one bragged he made $2 million last year in a private 2 person startup he created because he was bored with retirement. I believe him. Information has always been money in Wall Street, and even the leavings are immensly valuable)
Goss is left with a lot of people who dedicated and patriotic enough to stay...and a lot who couldn't cut it. His major challenge will be identifying the deadwood, and attracting new talent.
I wish Goss well...the CIA still has an important role to play, and, despite the current hype, terrorism is only a minor blip on the radar, if that. We still live in world where nation competes against nation, and the CIA's prime mission remains the same, helping America gain whatever advantage it can.
"During the Kosovo war, for example, we were regularly receiving information from people on the ground, inside Serbia and Yugoslavia. We could tell when an airplane took off from Aviano, Italy, when it crossed over the Croatian border, when it dumped its bombs and when it returned," Friedman says.
StratFor's strength is it's human intelligence, though it does a good job with signals as well. Yes, they brag about using only public intelligence, but a lot of that public intelligence is tips from contacts about public things that imply things not public.
Stratfor has a huge network of contacts around the world, mainly because of its policy of hiring ex intelligence officers from many nations. They are rumored to often broker information for other information, something you can hardly do with sigint.
1) StratFor has the best track record of any intelligence firm, see the url in the recent posting.
2) I don't "buy" into StratfFor, I am not even a subscriber. I do my own, independent analysis, but I am impressed with theirs.
3) You are right, it was a cheap shot. But common, how often does such a perfect straight line show up? I am only human, I couldn't resist. Besides, it's traditional to blame every problem on previous management.
4)I am aware ofthe CIA's problems adapting to a new reality, that was the whole POINT of my post. It wasn't criticism, but an explanation. For the record, I think they are doing a great job under the circumstances.
6) If the CIA's sole, or even main, job was locating terrorist, I would agree. But the America has far bigger problems than terrorists(mainly other nations), and the CIA IS the main defense against them. The field agents have been doing quit well, but there have been a number of problems with HQ, as mentioned in the url I posted.
The agency is... complicated, and often the left hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. Its the nature of the beast it's riding. (well, technically, it's in the belly of the beast, or perhaps the cloaca if you are HQ)
I have no doubt Goss is horrified. He just took over the CIA, and what GS manager would enjoy an outsider showing him a clear look at his department? And Goss hasn't had a chance ot fix things yet. THat is, if that's his goal...with the CIA, who knows?
By the way, didn't Goss inherit an agency that was once run by George Bush? It would explain a lot.
The CIA has other problems as well. The worse is that it facing some competition from private firms like StratFor(sorta like the US Post Office and Federal Express). It can't be much fun to be a world famous secret agency and having to explain to the Intelligence committee why you are being scooped by some small company in Austin,
Hmm.. if the CIA is getting rid of people, that means they are hiring. I would like to apply as an intelligence analyst, or maybe an In Tel Q VC... (There is a rumor the easiest way to apply for a job with the CIA is write in on your computer and wait for ADVISE to pick it up. http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.htm l).
Hmm, whats you opinion of Gibson Research's SpinRite's ability to get at those remapping areas? Supposedly its got a number of kludges that allow it to do so.
Other than that, I gotta concede the point, though I don't think its a serious concern for information confidentiality purposes. A single recoverable block or sector simply isn't that useful, and, how often do a whole bunch of sectors, all involved in the same file in the same file system, go bad at the same time?
At thats assuming you are not using an encrypting file system.
Wanna bet? There is a good article at http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-gut tman.html that discusses this, but the upshot is that you would have a better chance of seeing a realistic CSI script than some agency recovering useful info from a Gutmann or PRNG deleted disk.
Frankly, in a criminal investigation, who would bother? Lets face it, you are some investigative agency on a budget, and you can either waste many man years on recovering evidence or just write and erase some of your own in a few seconds... I mean, the jury's gonna be able to tell the difference?
It is only useful if you are doing something like a seized terrorist hard disk, and most likely, they are probably using USB thumbdrives these days, anyhow.
It almost happened. Mark Hurd turned NCR back into a powerhouse, though, then he left.
NCR has always been a company with tons of potential that few managers had the talent to bring out. Apparently none of those managers made it to the land down under.
The strength of NCR, at least here in the states, has always been in it's employee's. During the breakup of AT&T, the worst performing employees were transferred to NCR, average rated employees to Lucent, and the best employees remained with AT&T.
We all know the result; NCR has been by far the best performing company of the three, reliably delivering on their contracts, mainly due to a workforce that underpromises and overdelivers.
I can't see something like this happening under Hurd, he would have never allowed something so nutty to get to this stage. those employees ARE NCR's chief assets. I just hope some activist investors talk some sense into NCR management before it's too late.
God, am I enjoying this Microsoft Google war. Nasty, underhanded politics, brilliant countermoves, played across a backdrop of the whole world.
And a surprise ending...
My guess/prediction for how this all ends:
We are about a year away from a free, OSS version of Office/WebOffice that needs nothing but Tomcat and it will blow both sides away.
And the new, reconstituted and invigorated AT&T offers it as a commercial service, complete with portal/collaborative groupware (including hi def video conferencing) that runs across their secure, internal network, not the wide open internet (in reality, it's mostly the same network), and network storage at their central exchanges.
And then they announce that AT&T has bought Novell, enhanced SuSE with secret Unix projects they have been developing for 20 years, and is offering a production grade commercial Linux backed by thousands of AT&T business services experts in every neighborhood in America.
And a grid based, peer to peer, search engine with advanced NORA text mining capabilities, just so Google won't feel left out.
And, of course, their new LightSpeed (tm) video on demand network. now available in every home in America, complete with micro targeted ad's and FlexTime (tm) media sales policy, and with Web and teleworker based multimedia contact center integration.
And, riding atop a rising tide of nationalism, announce that AT&T is an American company, that has never been accused of collaborating with China, unlike Microsoft and Google, and is dedicated to making America competitive again.
I almost forgot, in the end, AT&T buys both Microsoft and Google for 10 cents a share.
Its gonna make an incredible movie someday. AT&T's deathstar like logo emerging like a sunrise behind the entire planet would be the perfect final scene.
Bet everyone forgot all about good old AT&T, right? You really thought all the RBOC's would merge and then just sit quietly by the sidelines?
1) Yes 2) Actually, it has enormous possiblities. Look beyond the fact that HESC are involved.
Lets take a look at what Palacek is trying to do.
He was studying how differentiation is triggered by environment. In this case, consider a bone fracture. In a bone fracture, cells start differentiating into cartilage and bone, a process triggered by the reduction in stess on the cell membranes (actually, it is caused by a release of hyaluronic acid isomerase, but stress is the macro cause)
THAT, has implications way beyond hESC's In the best case, you might considerably speed up wound healing such as broken bones using liquid crystals and some sort of electromagnetic field for positioning them. But liquid crystals could also be used as a form of nanotool for such things as non invasive surgery to clear plaques in blood vessels.
I am still convinced that this whole flap is a CI operation against Google. I wonder if Stanfor analysts would like to weighed in on its thoughts in this area? Their China analysts are the best there is.
Anyhow, Google seems to be responding about as best as could be hoped for. I really like the idea of them moving their servers to a safe nation. Regardless of other issues, the information in those servers is really dangerous to everyone regardless of nationality.
Google still has to repair the damage done by falling for the Chinese censhorhip bait, but I don't think anything permanent is done yet.
As far as the rest, they will have to play it by ear, but if they do it right, they should escape relatively unscathed. The important thing is to not fall for any more bait, A CI operations success usually depends upon targets that have knee jerk reactions.
Mmm...wanna bet? Happens in Chicago, etc as well. I have heard, anecdotally, from a reporter that anonymous accusations happens about 10,000 time a day in the US and law enforcement resources are being tied up, because these are usually couched as "suspicious activity" reports, and there are rules about handling them when there are enough of them. That "not using a shopping cart" was considered evidence of potential massive shoplifting. and the two officers were not charged with working out too long or spending money on dry cleaning...they were charge with theft of public funds.
If the victim is not in a political or financial position to defend themself, unlike as they were in the New Jersey cases, the result can be that the victim is unemployable at best and homeless or imprisoned at worst.
This was a minor problem, in the days before interlinked databases and federated text mining. Technology has turned this into a major problem, because the unclean data points these sorts of actions generate pollute far more databases than the call records of local police, often ending up in NCLC, Choicepoint, Equifax and Axciom (among others) databases as well.
You can assert it's beside the point, until you have been one of the victims. Then it hits home; its more like identity theft, except its rape, not theft, in a very real sense. Not a minor crime at all.
When you add in the fact it is a weapon used against whistleblowers and others (like law enforcement officers) that attempt to report crimes or enforce laws, it becomes a major issue indeed.
Which means that, in 2007-2008 Two parties, who, AT EVERY LEVEL, tend to fight as dirty as possible, are going to have microfocused databases on potential swing votors...and swing influencers. The mind boggles what sorts of, umm, interesting, scenarios of innuendos, accusations, blackmail, favors and threats might pop out as the race heats up. I mean, we are two years away from that New Jersey race, the DNC database isn't set up yet, and we are already seeing this.
I hope you can come up with a better line of justification of your reasoning than just simply stating your conclusion. If you feel this is the wrong way to approach it (which, incidently, I would agree, except I see no other solution), how would you suggest handling the problem? There is a clear and present danger to both real people and the public welfare.
For example, theres another cop who is accused of taking two hours to work out each day.
And, yes, I know that's silly, but you have no idea how low the bar is for political motivated accusations to be taken seriously in Somerset/Middlesex county. And anyone can be accused, not just cops. I know of one case where someone was accused of not using a shopping cart when shopping! Four month investigation, and, at one point, an investigator smashed the shoppers groceries out of his arms and threatened the poor guy.
Just about anything can be considered "suspicious activity", if the accuser is politically connected, and the poor cops have to investigate it. To their credit, most of the cops in the area do fair investigations and resist political pressure, often at the risk of their careers. But it is still a tremendous hassle for the accused, expecially if he gets an ambitious rookie cop as an investigator (they tend to feel they have to come up with something, even if they find the accusation groundless). And it can occasionally ruin lives.
When you add in the fact that you can make those accusations anonymously, you have one real serious social problem.
All the bill asks is that if the accusations get out of hand (which, believe me, they do) a record is available that can identify who made it. If nothing else, it helps to sift the serious accusations from the frivolous ones.
When you balance the cost of keeping a record against the cost of many ruined lives; well, that law doesn't seem that bad.
What really sucks is that a public servant, a law enforcement officer in New Jersey, with 4 decades of unblemished service, just got his career destroyed by those anonymous (and frivolous) smears for what many believe was part of a runup to a 2007 election.
My guess is that this law was in response to that.
So tell me, is it in the public interest to allow this sort of behavior? Can the rule of law even survive if career law enforcement officers can be indicted and convicted in the public forum without a chance even to defend themselves?
Of course not. Some sort of law is needed. Perhaps this law is ill advised, but it will draw attention to what is becoming a very serious social policy issue.
Free speech isn't free if it has a social cost; there are plenty of exceptions for when the public interest is not served. In this case, I think there is one more set of circumstances that needs to be addressed.
...those in the 917 area code just across the Hudson River on Manhattan Isle have a special place in hell reserved for them.
I believe that part of hell is called Newark.
In all seriousness, you have to make allowances for the fact that the area you mention is one of the most difficult to live in in the entire country, inheriting all of the problems of New York City and none of the benefits. If you live there, and you aren't perpetually angry, then you aren't paying attention to your environment.
Obviously Biondi knows its not gonna pass. He is probably trying for a chilling effect on a local issue.
My guess is that he is upset over the smear campaign against fellow Republican Somerset county Sheriff Provenzano and is trying to help.http://politics.nexcess.net/insideedge/somers et_county/ For those of you unfamiliar with the case, Provenzano is accused of charging the county for cleaning his uniforms!
In most places, this would be derided as silly, but Somerset country, the home of rogue DA Nick Bissell, is hypersensistive to such charges. Provenzano's career is probably ruined.
I do not know Povenzano personally, but I do know Somerset county law enforcers, and just want to state that they are the finest and most professional group of law enforcers in the nation. They don't deserve this, and should be protected.
This kind of smear campaign destroying the life of a 37 year veteran law enforcement officer is certainly is a good provocation for some sort of law to protect against internet smears.
HEY! Thats very misleading. All Scalia meant was that the guiding principles of the constitution should not be twisted to whatever the current political winds direct. That doesn't contradict your example. All it means is that he isn't going to read anything into the constitution that isn't actually there, not that he would reject an idea because the consitution didn't explicitly mention it.
Scalia works harder than any other Justice to maintain respect for our judicial system. All he was doing was trying to explain why he was opposed to judicial activism to in order to answer critics of our judicial system.
Actually, the real problem is that demand has sopped up most of the competant software engineers on the ENTIRE planet. India, China, Russia, etc are at 100% employment for experienced engineers.
A college degree doesn't turn out a good developer, years of hard work is the only forge that can temper knowlege with skill.
What most of these outsourcers haven't learned is to turn down work if they haven't the capacity. Development and QA isn't country or culture dependent, Indians and Chinese, AT THE SAME LEVEL OF SKILL, produce work equivalent to Westerners, Latin Americans or Africans. (Actually some of the best work I have seen has been from Iceland, of all places. I think it is because great programmers like working the night shift).
If you sign an outsourcing agreement now with most anywhere except America, you simply aren't going to get the best work; there isn't anyone available to do the work with enough experience. Remember, up until recently, there wasn't that much demand in other countries, so there wasn't a large labor pool. If you pay a low wage rate, there isn't going to be a lot of excess labor force, and there hasn't been time for the economics to shift the labor allocations.
Here in America, we have a lot of excess labor for several reasons. Outsourcing, high wages for years causing a supply of developers to be high, a tradition of age discrimination that makes most 40+ old engineers unemployable regardless of skill.
That last is especially significant, in my view. I have often thought of starting a project development house for 40+ developers (I was going call it "Grey Matters"), but everyone I talked to, from the Republican Political Aristocracy to line managers, thought it would never work. Not that they thought 40+ developers couldn't do the work, but because of cultural differences between the age groups. This, from folks that were outsourcing to developers that never even had direct CONTACT with Americans!
*Sigh* there are times when I worry my faith in humanity is actually unwitting satanism...
Actually, there really isn't much of a correlation between poor service and outsoourcing... Wordt customer service I have seen in over 5 decades was a local TMobile helpdesk.
There ARE, however, very real hidden costs to outsourcing that make it a difficult prospect at best; poor customer service just isn't one of them.
The worst is managing the relationship of your US staff and the outsourced staff. I have seen numerous examples of subtle or even outright sabotage of the project by the US staff.
One of the most successful outsourcers in the United States has a "core values" program for it's US staff...the ability to maintain political neutrality while acting as a good will ambassador is a key core value.
Western and Hindu culture are very compatible if you take care to manage the intercultural references, whch can cause major difficulties. For example, many Hindus will say "You are correct" to acknowledge they are listening. What they MEAN is "OK" or "Uh huh", but Westerners often take is as arrogance or judgmental.
Worse yet, Westerners take it as meaning that their point is understood, and it's culturally difficult (impolite) to ask for clarification if the other speaker has gone on to a new point. Its is very important to make sure what you think you are saying is actually what they are hearing.
One minor point on an underlying theme of these comments. Believe it or not, institutional economic analysis shows that India isn't a serious problem for US jobs, not like China is, anyhow. The reasons range from cultural differences (India is highly conservative, for the most part) to the fact that the level of convergence is much higher, as well as a much higher integration of Indians into American culture. I suspect the reason India is getting such favorable treatment from Bush is that they are viewed as a "client state" of America, not an independent nation, probably for good reason.
1) Have you actually ASKED the Slashdot crew? I believe there is a whole politics section where it is properly on topic. Judging from the number of comments whenever this topic comes up, it is probably the most highly discussed topic on the site.
2) You aren't going to know till you try. This is a pretty explosive topic right now, and there are plenty of groups that you can ask for help in getting people to comment, such as the AFL/CIO or Lou Dobbs viewers. Just think, you could be the first to slashdot slashdot itself!
3) Marketing Message? You don't need no stinkin marketing message. The media is lousy with marketing messages. People automatically tune out marketing messages. Just say whats in your heart and people will hear.
The point is, if you aren't ready to make the attempt, then you never really cared in the first place.
Uhh...Someone writing on a 500,000 viewer site for free is saying marketing is out of reach? (I think thats Slashdots readership)
You are right only in that you can't win if you insist on fighting on the enemies home territory.
Lets step back and lets assume all you have is the right to post on SlashDot.
THEN WHY HAVEN"T YOU POSTED A CALL FOR PEOPLE TO JOIN A CAMPAIGN? The government is going to listen to 500,000 votes, and thats assuming that only the direct readers are counted. add in friends and family, and you have several million votes to throw around.
And thats just Slashdot. Many sites on the Internet let you post, and most reporters put their email addresses up on the 'Net. Add in influential bloggers and some serious coordination and you can beat any marketing campaign. If Howard Dean and CivicSpace/Meetup can do it, why the heck isn't anyone who is complaining trying to do it also?
And don't tell me you are unless you can show me a slashdot based unionizing effort.
If you object to something that our government does, there is a simple solution:
Get someone else elected! Join a campaign! Even if your representative agrees with you, it is likely there is a nearby district that doesn't. Go over there and join that campaign, instead.
You have a printer, print and distribute leaflets. Get to know your neighbors, talk to them.
It doesn't even matter if you win on the issues you care about, as long as you win. Use local issues. If you are in Texas, for example, remind everybody that Sam Travis would never have ceeded american ports of our southern borders, and the republican congressmen that rolled over on that one aren't true texans...true texans never retreat, never surrender.
How can anyone hear if you aren't willing to raise your voice?
Actually no. PRC is Peoples Republic of China, the 22 provinces, etc physical state in Asia.
Communist Chinese has several different meanings.
Usually it's an outdated term refering to the Chinese people of the past few decades.
It is also used to refer to the present mainland chinese population, though the adjective "rabid capitalists" would probably be more accurate. Most PRC citizens support the CPC because they think it's the only thing keeping their society together, not because of any belief in Communism.
It sometimes refers to the CPC (Communist Party of China), who have nominal control over the political government. In practice, they are an alliance of some of the most influential Guanxi groups, but they often have conflicts between the groups, which results in things like the Tiananmen protests of 1989 and the subsequent massacres. They also spend a lot of time making sure no other Guanxi alliances gain power. Think of them as similar to American Republican NeoConservatives.
PLA is the Peoples Liberation Army run by the CMC's (Central Military Commissions) that have nominal control of the military and police. In practice, independent warlords control a significant portion of the PRC. Until recently, many people who used the word "Communist Chinese", actually were referring to the PLA. Recently, they are starting to resemble a military, but for a long time, you could think of them as similar to military-industrial complex with private police such as was common in the American West of the 1800's.
Slashdot Mirror
I interviewed iwth one of these groups last summer. Believe it or not, they tolde me that they do a lot of sourcing to american companies who foreign outsource (thus staying off the radar as far as foreign outsourcing concerns go)
More significantly, they use COTS software products, some of which are produced and maintained in countries that are likely to be on the receiving end of the target list. It should be fascinating to find out what happens if they ever try using it against one of those countries.
Incidently, I lost the interview for criticising some of their more glaring security holes. It was an technical architecture position, I thought that was a deliberate ommission to see if I knew what I was doing. It turns out that they are not simply too lazy to follow procedure, they are most clearly opposed to it.
Why, I cannot say, but it appeared to me at least that it was pressure from a few key people, rather than a general attitude, most of the low level techies seemed to appreciate teh need for more security and were quite frustrated by the lack of concern.
I know, after all the flap about junior's cronyism, and poor hiring practices, it was just so perfect a setup for a joke about reforming the CIA's "retired in place" managers, though it should be noted that most of those managers in question were hired when senior was in charge. Just my luck I attracted the attention of the only SlashDot reader without a sense of humor.
o sts)
Goss has a tough haul ahead of him, the CIA's worst problem, really, is the competition from StratFor and other private firms (it's a little known, but thriving industry) for top talent. (see this reprint in Free Republic from the New York Times magazine http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/897621/p
The really talented analysts and field personnel can make a lot more money in private industry (last november, one bragged he made $2 million last year in a private 2 person startup he created because he was bored with retirement. I believe him. Information has always been money in Wall Street, and even the leavings are immensly valuable)
Goss is left with a lot of people who dedicated and patriotic enough to stay...and a lot who couldn't cut it. His major challenge will be identifying the deadwood, and attracting new talent.
I wish Goss well...the CIA still has an important role to play, and, despite the current hype, terrorism is only a minor blip on the radar, if that. We still live in world where nation competes against nation, and the CIA's prime mission remains the same, helping America gain whatever advantage it can.
Heres a nice little article from Austin Business Journal absolutely refuting your claim
/ 08/smallb1.html
http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2002/04
"During the Kosovo war, for example, we were regularly receiving information from people on the ground, inside Serbia and Yugoslavia. We could tell when an airplane took off from Aviano, Italy, when it crossed over the Croatian border, when it dumped its bombs and when it returned," Friedman says.
THats not Human Intelligence?
Now that's just plain wrong.
StratFor's strength is it's human intelligence, though it does a good job with signals as well. Yes, they brag about using only public intelligence, but a lot of that public intelligence is tips from contacts about public things that imply things not public.
Stratfor has a huge network of contacts around the world, mainly because of its policy of hiring ex intelligence officers from many nations. They are rumored to often broker information for other information, something you can hardly do with sigint.
Straight line as in setup for a joke.
1) StratFor has the best track record of any intelligence firm, see the url in the recent posting.
2) I don't "buy" into StratfFor, I am not even a subscriber. I do my own, independent analysis, but I am impressed with theirs.
3) You are right, it was a cheap shot. But common, how often does such a perfect straight line show up? I am only human, I couldn't resist. Besides, it's traditional to blame every problem on previous management.
4)I am aware ofthe CIA's problems adapting to a new reality, that was the whole POINT of my post. It wasn't criticism, but an explanation. For the record, I think they are doing a great job under the circumstances.
6) If the CIA's sole, or even main, job was locating terrorist, I would agree. But the America has far bigger problems than terrorists(mainly other nations), and the CIA IS the main defense against them. The field agents have been doing quit well, but there have been a number of problems with HQ, as mentioned in the url I posted.
The CIA is changing. Give them time.
... complicated, and often the left hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. Its the nature of the beast it's riding. (well, technically, it's in the belly of the beast, or perhaps the cloaca if you are HQ)
o r-credible/
m l).
The following article explains some of the issues behind the Tribune article
http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/26366
The agency is
I have no doubt Goss is horrified. He just took over the CIA, and what GS manager would enjoy an outsider showing him a clear look at his department? And Goss hasn't had a chance ot fix things yet. THat is, if that's his goal...with the CIA, who knows?
By the way, didn't Goss inherit an agency that was once run by George Bush? It would explain a lot.
The CIA has other problems as well. The worse is that it facing some competition from private firms like StratFor(sorta like the US Post Office and Federal Express). It can't be much fun to be a world famous secret agency and having to explain to the Intelligence committee why you are being scooped by some small company in Austin,
For those of you who haven't heard of it, StratFor (http://www.stratfor.com/) is a private intelligence firm, with several hundred thousand customers, that is the CIA for multinationals and private individuals. It is considered somewhat more accurate than the CIA. http://seekerblog.com/archives/20050313/is-stratf
Hmm.. if the CIA is getting rid of people, that means they are hiring. I would like to apply as an intelligence analyst, or maybe an In Tel Q VC... (There is a rumor the easiest way to apply for a job with the CIA is write in on your computer and wait for ADVISE to pick it up. http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.ht
Hmm, whats you opinion of Gibson Research's SpinRite's ability to get at those remapping areas? Supposedly its got a number of kludges that allow it to do so.
Other than that, I gotta concede the point, though I don't think its a serious concern for information confidentiality purposes. A single recoverable block or sector simply isn't that useful, and, how often do a whole bunch of sectors, all involved in the same file in the same file system, go bad at the same time?
At thats assuming you are not using an encrypting file system.
Wanna bet?t tman.html that discusses this, but the upshot is that you would have a better chance of seeing a realistic CSI script than some agency recovering useful info from a Gutmann or PRNG deleted disk.
There is a good article at http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-gu
Frankly, in a criminal investigation, who would bother? Lets face it, you are some investigative agency on a budget, and you can either waste many man years on recovering evidence or just write and erase some of your own in a few seconds... I mean, the jury's gonna be able to tell the difference?
It is only useful if you are doing something like a seized terrorist hard disk, and most likely, they are probably using USB thumbdrives these days, anyhow.
It almost happened. Mark Hurd turned NCR back into a powerhouse, though, then he left.
NCR has always been a company with tons of potential that few managers had the talent to bring out. Apparently none of those managers made it to the land down under.
The strength of NCR, at least here in the states, has always been in it's employee's. During the breakup of AT&T, the worst performing employees were transferred to NCR, average rated employees to Lucent, and the best employees remained with AT&T.
We all know the result; NCR has been by far the best performing company of the three, reliably delivering on their contracts, mainly due to a workforce that underpromises and overdelivers.
I can't see something like this happening under Hurd, he would have never allowed something so nutty to get to this stage. those employees ARE NCR's chief assets. I just hope some activist investors talk some sense into NCR management before it's too late.
God, am I enjoying this Microsoft Google war. Nasty, underhanded politics, brilliant countermoves, played across a backdrop of the whole world.
And a surprise ending...
My guess/prediction for how this all ends:
We are about a year away from a free, OSS version of Office/WebOffice that needs nothing but Tomcat and it will blow both sides away.
And the new, reconstituted and invigorated AT&T offers it as a commercial service, complete with portal/collaborative groupware (including hi def video conferencing) that runs across their secure, internal network, not the wide open internet (in reality, it's mostly the same network), and network storage at their central exchanges.
And then they announce that AT&T has bought Novell, enhanced SuSE with secret Unix projects they have been developing for 20 years, and is offering a production grade commercial Linux backed by thousands of AT&T business services experts in every neighborhood in America.
And a grid based, peer to peer, search engine with advanced NORA text mining capabilities, just so Google won't feel left out.
And, of course, their new LightSpeed (tm) video on demand network. now available in every home in America, complete with micro targeted ad's and FlexTime (tm) media sales policy, and with Web and teleworker based multimedia contact center integration.
And, riding atop a rising tide of nationalism, announce that AT&T is an American company, that has never been accused of collaborating with China, unlike Microsoft and Google, and is dedicated to making America competitive again.
I almost forgot, in the end, AT&T buys both Microsoft and Google for 10 cents a share.
Its gonna make an incredible movie someday. AT&T's deathstar like logo emerging like a sunrise behind the entire planet would be the perfect final scene.
Bet everyone forgot all about good old AT&T, right? You really thought all the RBOC's would merge and then just sit quietly by the sidelines?
1) Yes
2) Actually, it has enormous possiblities. Look beyond the fact that HESC are involved.
Lets take a look at what Palacek is trying to do.
He was studying how differentiation is triggered by environment. In this case, consider a bone fracture. In a bone fracture, cells start differentiating into cartilage and bone, a process triggered by the reduction in stess on the cell membranes (actually, it is caused by a release of hyaluronic acid isomerase, but stress is the macro cause)
THAT, has implications way beyond hESC's In the best case, you might considerably speed up wound healing such as broken bones using liquid crystals and some sort of electromagnetic field for positioning them. But liquid crystals could also be used as a form of nanotool for such things as non invasive surgery to clear plaques in blood vessels.
I am still convinced that this whole flap is a CI operation against Google. I wonder if Stanfor analysts would like to weighed in on its thoughts in this area? Their China analysts are the best there is.
Anyhow, Google seems to be responding about as best as could be hoped for. I really like the idea of them moving their servers to a safe nation. Regardless of other issues, the information in those servers is really dangerous to everyone regardless of nationality.
Google still has to repair the damage done by falling for the Chinese censhorhip bait, but I don't think anything permanent is done yet.
As far as the rest, they will have to play it by ear, but if they do it right, they should escape relatively unscathed. The important thing is to not fall for any more bait, A CI operations success usually depends upon targets that have knee jerk reactions.
Mmm...wanna bet? Happens in Chicago, etc as well. I have heard, anecdotally, from a reporter that anonymous accusations happens about 10,000 time a day in the US and law enforcement resources are being tied up, because these are usually couched as "suspicious activity" reports, and there are rules about handling them when there are enough of them. That "not using a shopping cart" was considered evidence of potential massive shoplifting. and the two officers were not charged with working out too long or spending money on dry cleaning...they were charge with theft of public funds.
i nful-lessons-from-2004.html
a ng+ickes+clinton&btnG=Google+Search) the fact that the CPC/PRC will be about a year away from collapsing internally (http://simonworld.mu.nu/archives/150816.php), rising American protectionism and isolationism like the DPW issue, and the ADVISE system adding blog entries to the suspicous activity database http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.htm land we pretty much have a perfect storm brewing both in China and America. The damage to America's reputation frow DPW was bad enough...this could be far worse.
If the victim is not in a political or financial position to defend themself, unlike as they were in the New Jersey cases, the result can be that the victim is unemployable at best and homeless or imprisoned at worst.
This was a minor problem, in the days before interlinked databases and federated text mining. Technology has turned this into a major problem, because the unclean data points these sorts of actions generate pollute far more databases than the call records of local police, often ending up in NCLC, Choicepoint, Equifax and Axciom (among others) databases as well.
You can assert it's beside the point, until you have been one of the victims. Then it hits home; its more like identity theft, except its rape, not theft, in a very real sense. Not a minor crime at all.
When you add in the fact it is a weapon used against whistleblowers and others (like law enforcement officers) that attempt to report crimes or enforce laws, it becomes a major issue indeed.
Now lets kick it up a notch. I have heard that the Democrats are setting up a potential voter database for text mining (CSPAN, last week) similar to the ones the Republicans used in 2004.
http://ifk-johnkerry.blogspot.com/2004/12/more-pa
Which means that, in 2007-2008 Two parties, who, AT EVERY LEVEL, tend to fight as dirty as possible, are going to have microfocused databases on potential swing votors...and swing influencers. The mind boggles what sorts of, umm, interesting, scenarios of innuendos, accusations, blackmail, favors and threats might pop out as the race heats up. I mean, we are two years away from that New Jersey race, the DNC database isn't set up yet, and we are already seeing this.
Now add in potential donors, such as the chinese fundraising scandal (Huang, Ickes, etc) a few years ago,(http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=john+Hu
I hope you can come up with a better line of justification of your reasoning than just simply stating your conclusion. If you feel this is the wrong way to approach it (which, incidently, I would agree, except I see no other solution), how would you suggest handling the problem? There is a clear and present danger to both real people and the public welfare.
If it were only just defamation...
For example, theres another cop who is accused of taking two hours to work out each day.
And, yes, I know that's silly, but you have no idea how low the bar is for political motivated accusations to be taken seriously in Somerset/Middlesex county. And anyone can be accused, not just cops. I know of one case where someone was accused of not using a shopping cart when shopping! Four month investigation, and, at one point, an investigator smashed the shoppers groceries out of his arms and threatened the poor guy.
Just about anything can be considered "suspicious activity", if the accuser is politically connected, and the poor cops have to investigate it. To their credit, most of the cops in the area do fair investigations and resist political pressure, often at the risk of their careers. But it is still a tremendous hassle for the accused, expecially if he gets an ambitious rookie cop as an investigator (they tend to feel they have to come up with something, even if they find the accusation groundless). And it can occasionally ruin lives.
When you add in the fact that you can make those accusations anonymously, you have one real serious social problem.
All the bill asks is that if the accusations get out of hand (which, believe me, they do) a record is available that can identify who made it. If nothing else, it helps to sift the serious accusations from the frivolous ones.
When you balance the cost of keeping a record against the cost of many ruined lives; well, that law doesn't seem that bad.
What really sucks is that a public servant, a law enforcement officer in New Jersey, with 4 decades of unblemished service, just got his career destroyed by those anonymous (and frivolous) smears for what many believe was part of a runup to a 2007 election.
My guess is that this law was in response to that.
So tell me, is it in the public interest to allow this sort of behavior? Can the rule of law even survive if career law enforcement officers can be indicted and convicted in the public forum without a chance even to defend themselves?
Of course not. Some sort of law is needed. Perhaps this law is ill advised, but it will draw attention to what is becoming a very serious social policy issue.
Free speech isn't free if it has a social cost; there are plenty of exceptions for when the public interest is not served. In this case, I think there is one more set of circumstances that needs to be addressed.
...those in the 917 area code just across the Hudson River on Manhattan Isle have a special place in hell reserved for them.
I believe that part of hell is called Newark.
In all seriousness, you have to make allowances for the fact that the area you mention is one of the most difficult to live in in the entire country, inheriting all of the problems of New York City and none of the benefits. If you live there, and you aren't perpetually angry, then you aren't paying attention to your environment.
Obviously Biondi knows its not gonna pass. He is probably trying for a chilling effect on a local issue.
s et_county/ For those of you unfamiliar with the case, Provenzano is accused of charging the county for cleaning his uniforms!
My guess is that he is upset over the smear campaign against fellow Republican Somerset county Sheriff Provenzano and is trying to help.http://politics.nexcess.net/insideedge/somer
In most places, this would be derided as silly, but Somerset country, the home of rogue DA Nick Bissell, is hypersensistive to such charges. Provenzano's career is probably ruined.
I do not know Povenzano personally, but I do know Somerset county law enforcers, and just want to state that they are the finest and most professional group of law enforcers in the nation. They don't deserve this, and should be protected.
This kind of smear campaign destroying the life of a 37 year veteran law enforcement officer is certainly is a good provocation for some sort of law to protect against internet smears.
HEY! Thats very misleading. All Scalia meant was that the guiding principles of the constitution should not be twisted to whatever the current political winds direct. That doesn't contradict your example. All it means is that he isn't going to read anything into the constitution that isn't actually there, not that he would reject an idea because the consitution didn't explicitly mention it.
Scalia works harder than any other Justice to maintain respect for our judicial system. All he was doing was trying to explain why he was opposed to judicial activism to in order to answer critics of our judicial system.
Actually, the real problem is that demand has sopped up most of the competant software engineers on the ENTIRE planet. India, China, Russia, etc are at 100% employment for experienced engineers.
A college degree doesn't turn out a good developer, years of hard work is the only forge that can temper knowlege with skill.
What most of these outsourcers haven't learned is to turn down work if they haven't the capacity. Development and QA isn't country or culture dependent, Indians and Chinese, AT THE SAME LEVEL OF SKILL, produce work equivalent to Westerners, Latin Americans or Africans. (Actually some of the best work I have seen has been from Iceland, of all places. I think it is because great programmers like working the night shift).
If you sign an outsourcing agreement now with most anywhere except America, you simply aren't going to get the best work; there isn't anyone available to do the work with enough experience. Remember, up until recently, there wasn't that much demand in other countries, so there wasn't a large labor pool. If you pay a low wage rate, there isn't going to be a lot of excess labor force, and there hasn't been time for the economics to shift the labor allocations.
Here in America, we have a lot of excess labor for several reasons. Outsourcing, high wages for years causing a supply of developers to be high, a tradition of age discrimination that makes most 40+ old engineers unemployable regardless of skill.
That last is especially significant, in my view. I have often thought of starting a project development house for 40+ developers (I was going call it "Grey Matters"), but everyone I talked to, from the Republican Political Aristocracy to line managers, thought it would never work. Not that they thought 40+ developers couldn't do the work, but because of cultural differences between the age groups. This, from folks that were outsourcing to developers that never even had direct CONTACT with Americans!
*Sigh* there are times when I worry my faith in humanity is actually unwitting satanism...
Actually, there really isn't much of a correlation between poor service and outsoourcing... Wordt customer service I have seen in over 5 decades was a local TMobile helpdesk.
There ARE, however, very real hidden costs to outsourcing that make it a difficult prospect at best; poor customer service just isn't one of them.
The worst is managing the relationship of your US staff and the outsourced staff. I have seen numerous examples of subtle or even outright sabotage of the project by the US staff.
One of the most successful outsourcers in the United States has a "core values" program for it's US staff...the ability to maintain political neutrality while acting as a good will ambassador is a key core value.
Western and Hindu culture are very compatible if you take care to manage the intercultural references, whch can cause major difficulties. For example, many Hindus will say "You are correct" to acknowledge they are listening. What they MEAN is "OK" or "Uh huh", but Westerners often take is as arrogance or judgmental.
Worse yet, Westerners take it as meaning that their point is understood, and it's culturally difficult (impolite) to ask for clarification if the other speaker has gone on to a new point. Its is very important to make sure what you think you are saying is actually what they are hearing.
One minor point on an underlying theme of these comments. Believe it or not, institutional economic analysis shows that India isn't a serious problem for US jobs, not like China is, anyhow. The reasons range from cultural differences (India is highly conservative, for the most part) to the fact that the level of convergence is much higher, as well as a much higher integration of Indians into American culture. I suspect the reason India is getting such favorable treatment from Bush is that they are viewed as a "client state" of America, not an independent nation, probably for good reason.
1) Have you actually ASKED the Slashdot crew? I believe there is a whole politics section where it is properly on topic. Judging from the number of comments whenever this topic comes up, it is probably the most highly discussed topic on the site.
2) You aren't going to know till you try. This is a pretty explosive topic right now, and there are plenty of groups that you can ask for help in getting people to comment, such as the AFL/CIO or Lou Dobbs viewers. Just think, you could be the first to slashdot slashdot itself!
3) Marketing Message? You don't need no stinkin marketing message. The media is lousy with marketing messages. People automatically tune out marketing messages. Just say whats in your heart and people will hear.
The point is, if you aren't ready to make the attempt, then you never really cared in the first place.
Uhh...Someone writing on a 500,000 viewer site for free is saying marketing is out of reach? (I think thats Slashdots readership)
You are right only in that you can't win if you insist on fighting on the enemies home territory.
Lets step back and lets assume all you have is the right to post on SlashDot.
THEN WHY HAVEN"T YOU POSTED A CALL FOR PEOPLE TO JOIN A CAMPAIGN? The government is going to listen to 500,000 votes, and thats assuming that only the direct readers are counted. add in friends and family, and you have several million votes to throw around.
And thats just Slashdot. Many sites on the Internet let you post, and most reporters put their email addresses up on the 'Net. Add in influential bloggers and some serious coordination and you can beat any marketing campaign. If Howard Dean and CivicSpace/Meetup can do it, why the heck isn't anyone who is complaining trying to do it also?
And don't tell me you are unless you can show me a slashdot based unionizing effort.
If you object to something that our government does, there is a simple solution:
Get someone else elected! Join a campaign! Even if your representative agrees with you, it is likely there is a nearby district that doesn't. Go over there and join that campaign, instead.
You have a printer, print and distribute leaflets. Get to know your neighbors, talk to them.
It doesn't even matter if you win on the issues you care about, as long as you win. Use local issues. If you are in Texas, for example, remind everybody that Sam Travis would never have ceeded american ports of our southern borders, and the republican congressmen that rolled over on that one aren't true texans...true texans never retreat, never surrender.
How can anyone hear if you aren't willing to raise your voice?
Actually no.
PRC is Peoples Republic of China, the 22 provinces, etc physical state in Asia.
Communist Chinese has several different meanings.
Usually it's an outdated term refering to the Chinese people of the past few decades.
It is also used to refer to the present mainland chinese population, though the adjective "rabid capitalists" would probably be more accurate. Most PRC citizens support the CPC because they think it's the only thing keeping their society together, not because of any belief in Communism.
It sometimes refers to the CPC (Communist Party of China), who have nominal control over the political government. In practice, they are an alliance of some of the most influential Guanxi groups, but they often have conflicts between the groups, which results in things like the Tiananmen protests of 1989 and the subsequent massacres. They also spend a lot of time making sure no other Guanxi alliances gain power. Think of them as similar to American Republican NeoConservatives.
PLA is the Peoples Liberation Army run by the CMC's (Central Military Commissions) that have nominal control of the military and police. In practice, independent warlords control a significant portion of the PRC. Until recently, many people who used the word "Communist Chinese", actually were referring to the PLA. Recently, they are starting to resemble a military, but for a long time, you could think of them as similar to military-industrial complex with private police such as was common in the American West of the 1800's.