And really: is there any geek here who doesn't know how to leave a Web server running overnight or on weekends?:)
Are you as large a hacker target as the US Government? Would you set your web server on auto-pilot and let it be, without monitoring it for possibly weeks/months?
Hey, it's not like they didn't know this has been coming MONTHS in advance, is it?
Yeah, except known about in the sense that it wasn't guaranteed to happen. Do you plan for a shutdown and waste money if it doesn't happen, or not plan and risk unpreparedness if it does?
Let me guess - retards like you can predict the future, and also wouldn't possibly lay criticism if a major government site were hacked while in "overnight/weekend" mode... for 6 weeks.
I simply don't understand why it's such a big deal for America to fix something that is so obviously broken, your a superpower and your people are sneaking into Canada. It's really a sign that the US political system is so incapable of dealing with important infrastructure issues and the next stop is despotism.
It's the fundamental challenge of governing in the US: how to run an effective government when half the population is stupid. Really stupid, as in anti-science (no evolution, no global warming) gun-loving retards that listen to conservative talk radio and believe every bullshit conspiracy theory they hear. Those same people vote the Plutocracy Party and willingly support any sort a give away to the wealthy or corporations after being distracted by simple slogans.
What backlash was that? When it was too late to drum up another candidate, all the muted criticism ended and the RNC still forked over money for his campaign.
How batshit insane must it have seemed when someone said a fungus called penicillium would treat infection? People were so skeptical he had to down a beaker of it (if I'm thinking of the right guy) after infecting himself with I forget what just to prove it. Even then there was probably a lot of doubt cast on it when it treated say staph but not a viral infection.
You're thinking of Marshall (and Warren) who found that ulcers were caused by a bacteria - H. Pylori.
Big pharma did the corporate thing when faced with this threat to their revenue stream of ulcer treatments - they shit all over them, claiming their scientists proved them wrong, attacking them, etc.
Marshall infected himself, then cured himself, to prove his point. His findings were easily reproduceable, easily studied, and eventually the evidence was undeniable. Companies issued apologies...
Today we have energy companies doing the same thing to climate researchers.
Sure, I don't power use much anymore, but you know what? That fun is gone. Life is too short to spend so much time tweaking config files, and too short to use ugly, obtuse, opaque systems like Unity. I never thought I'd ever say this, but I love OSX.
Exactly my sentiments! These days I just run linux in a vm - the abstracted hardware works great, snapshot before any risky config changes for easy recovery - and osx for day to day. And windows for some games.
My memory is a bit fuzzy, since it was years ago, but I remember installing an early Ubuntu (either warthog or hedgehog) and it had a nice graphical installer that didn't bombard you with questions.
I also installed debian from the same era. It was a text-mode installer, asked a bunch of obscure questions (assuming regular users) like which filesystem I wanted to use. After that, it was a extra work to get X up and working.
I'll let you figure out why debian didn't become popular in the demographic ubuntu was initially aimed at.
What happens if all the members of that team are above average in terms of company wide productivity?
If that honestly happens, then the manager would be expected to defend this situation in ranking meetings by showing numbers - features implemented, bugs fixed, on time delivery, etc.
Or you have a weak team where all of them are below average?
Easier situation - the lowest goes and the manager doesn't have to feel too bad.
Before all the anti-government bozos show up to point and laugh:
However, 10 years on CSC has still not delivered the software and "not a single trust has a fully functioning Lorenzo care records system". This failure, the report said, was "extraordinary", while CSC was accused of a "failure to deliver" and "poor performance".
Yeah, that's a private corporation failing to perform/deliver. They're too busy focusing on cashing their checks, locking in their revenue stream, and paying their executives to actually deliver the product they agreed to.
What the government is bad at is managing contracts:
"systemic failure" in the government's ability to draw up and manage large IT contracts.
"there is still a long way to go before government departments can honestly say that they have learned and properly applied the lessons from previous contracting failures."
CSC should be sued for breach of contract, sued for fraud, sued for damages.
A better question is when did MP3 players go mainstream? Then we get into the chicken and the egg discussion. Did Apple ride the MP3 wave that was already building or was it the "cool" factor of iPods that made MP3 players mainstream? Personally, I think that MP3 players would have gone mainstream without Apple, but Apple did have impeccable timing.
MP3 players went mainstream when the iTunes Store sold music and made it easy for regular people to buy music and get it to their device.
It's time to do three things in this country. 1) Introduce term limits for congress. Sorry, Feinbitch, McShame, you're time is up and it's clear you don't have the best interests in mind for our country. 2) Change campaign funding legislation and limit all contributions to $1000 from any company or private party. 3) We need to re-introduce Stocks (not the wall street kind) in DC and start putting these assholes in them for a week or two, I'm sure it will be a boost to the local economy in terms of travel and vendors selling rotten tomatoes.
I'm sure these changes will make you feel good and all... but you do realize these would all be Amendments to the Constitution - right?
1) Term limits - no mention of any kind of limit at all, not even ORIGINALLY for the President. The 22nd amendment isn't even that old. 2) Funding limits - I'd like to see that too, but it turns out petitioning the government is a FIRST amendment right, and it sucks to be not as wealthy/organized as lobbyists, but that isn't UNconstitutional for them. Recently upheld in the Citizens United case. There is a butthole of capitalism and the free market, and this may well be it. 3) Stockades - yeah except for that pesky 8th amendment.
#2 bugs me, but it isn't any different than how zealously gun lobbyists defend the 2nd amendment.
So what if you have to pay someone to get off his ass and check an inconvenient readout manually: at least that's a job created in an otherwise machine-driven economy.
But that cuts into profits and corporations have shown repeatedly they'll throw anyone/anything under the bus to maintain their profit margin.
Over 50 BILLION dollars and they didn't catch and stop the Boston bombers.
It's easy to be a critic.
If they had stopped the bombers before they detonated the bombs, you'd claim a conspiracy or coverup meant to scare the public and gain sympathy (e.g. recent embassy closures), plus accuse them of spying on domestic targets.
The FBI is the agency for this situation and they aren't getting the entirety of the 50 billion.
Come on folks... read the damn info. The site says that "open source" data is "publicly available information appearing in print or electronic form". I'm gonna speculate part of the open source budget goes towards the salaries of linguists, computers for translation and the support staff, etc.
There's also a government website: www.opensource.gov
It could be that a split and reorg would be good - say move the information assurance folks and merge them with DISA. Then clamp down on any out of control signals intelligence programs.
At a defining crossroads. My fellow Americans, now is the worst possible moment to wimp out.
But isn't that what all these sites that are shutting down are doing - wimping out? I can understand Lavabit, but these others are just folding due to what exactly, uneasy feelings?
Alternatively, the most straightforward way to stop criticism from disaffected "fans" would be to give them what they want, rather than assuming that some designer somewhere knows better.
Because rabid angry "fans" always agree with each other and would all support the same thing.
Um, no. More like proof that business seeks to drain as many resources out of its customers as possible. They'll harvest you and toss you aside; after all it isn't like most are repeat customers they need to leave a positive impression with.
The one I can't figure out is iTunes. Why would anyone buy anything that you can get on Netflix for the price of many months of Netflix? The prices on iTunes are bonkers.
I buy a handful of shows on iTunes and think it's great. For about $40 a show (rough price for a season pass), I get the episodes a day after they air, in HD. I'd get more shows if they were available in this fashion (e.g. the ones I mention below)
Blaming iTunes for prices is like blaming Amazon for ebook prices - the reality is they have a floor somebody else sets.
Netflix is great but they are tied to an external release schedule as well - Homeland, Game of Thrones, Dexter, etc end up on Netflix on the studio release schedule, which for those shows is a year after the season ends.
So basically for me, there are 4-5 shows I'm willing to pay to watch NOW rather than wait a year. And no, I'm unwilling to download them. Of those, 2-3 are available on iTunes and I get them. Since I'm a cable cutter this works out cheaper and I am supporting this new business model I hope becomes more and more viable (or cable changes their ways but that will be tough as too many folks are slicing the pie - too many lose even if some are better off with change).
My old cable bill (TV portion) was about $80 a month. That's two shows a month off iTunes to break even. There aren't 24 shows a year I'm interested in buying, so iTunes for those that I am and Netflix for the rest works for me.
In addition to Jeff Flanagan's response, another factor is competing business interests. For every cloud provider that might lose revenue in the future, there are 2 defense contractors making profits now.
Slashdot Mirror
And really: is there any geek here who doesn't know how to leave a Web server running overnight or on weekends? :)
Are you as large a hacker target as the US Government? Would you set your web server on auto-pilot and let it be, without monitoring it for possibly weeks/months?
Hey, it's not like they didn't know this has been coming MONTHS in advance, is it?
Yeah, except known about in the sense that it wasn't guaranteed to happen. Do you plan for a shutdown and waste money if it doesn't happen, or not plan and risk unpreparedness if it does?
Let me guess - retards like you can predict the future, and also wouldn't possibly lay criticism if a major government site were hacked while in "overnight/weekend" mode... for 6 weeks.
Idiot.
I simply don't understand why it's such a big deal for America to fix something that is so obviously broken, your a superpower and your people are sneaking into Canada. It's really a sign that the US political system is so incapable of dealing with important infrastructure issues and the next stop is despotism.
It's the fundamental challenge of governing in the US: how to run an effective government when half the population is stupid. Really stupid, as in anti-science (no evolution, no global warming) gun-loving retards that listen to conservative talk radio and believe every bullshit conspiracy theory they hear. Those same people vote the Plutocracy Party and willingly support any sort a give away to the wealthy or corporations after being distracted by simple slogans.
What backlash was that? When it was too late to drum up another candidate, all the muted criticism ended and the RNC still forked over money for his campaign.
How batshit insane must it have seemed when someone said a fungus called penicillium would treat infection? People were so skeptical he had to down a beaker of it (if I'm thinking of the right guy) after infecting himself with I forget what just to prove it. Even then there was probably a lot of doubt cast on it when it treated say staph but not a viral infection.
You're thinking of Marshall (and Warren) who found that ulcers were caused by a bacteria - H. Pylori.
Big pharma did the corporate thing when faced with this threat to their revenue stream of ulcer treatments - they shit all over them, claiming their scientists proved them wrong, attacking them, etc.
Marshall infected himself, then cured himself, to prove his point. His findings were easily reproduceable, easily studied, and eventually the evidence was undeniable. Companies issued apologies...
Today we have energy companies doing the same thing to climate researchers.
Sure, I don't power use much anymore, but you know what? That fun is gone. Life is too short to spend so much time tweaking config files, and too short to use ugly, obtuse, opaque systems like Unity. I never thought I'd ever say this, but I love OSX.
Exactly my sentiments! These days I just run linux in a vm - the abstracted hardware works great, snapshot before any risky config changes for easy recovery - and osx for day to day. And windows for some games.
How come Debian didn't get popular, then?
My memory is a bit fuzzy, since it was years ago, but I remember installing an early Ubuntu (either warthog or hedgehog) and it had a nice graphical installer that didn't bombard you with questions.
I also installed debian from the same era. It was a text-mode installer, asked a bunch of obscure questions (assuming regular users) like which filesystem I wanted to use. After that, it was a extra work to get X up and working.
I'll let you figure out why debian didn't become popular in the demographic ubuntu was initially aimed at.
What happens if all the members of that team are above average in terms of company wide productivity?
If that honestly happens, then the manager would be expected to defend this situation in ranking meetings by showing numbers - features implemented, bugs fixed, on time delivery, etc.
Or you have a weak team where all of them are below average?
Easier situation - the lowest goes and the manager doesn't have to feel too bad.
I served my time there ;) but never was a manager.
Sounds like Wall Street Rules, where success is rewarded and so is failure, just a little less so.
By that logic, Linux developers are murderers. After all, Hans Reiser murdered his wife therefore all other kernel devs are killers?
Before all the anti-government bozos show up to point and laugh:
However, 10 years on CSC has still not delivered the software and "not a single trust has a fully functioning Lorenzo care records system". This failure, the report said, was "extraordinary", while CSC was accused of a "failure to deliver" and "poor performance".
Yeah, that's a private corporation failing to perform/deliver. They're too busy focusing on cashing their checks, locking in their revenue stream, and paying their executives to actually deliver the product they agreed to.
What the government is bad at is managing contracts:
"systemic failure" in the government's ability to draw up and manage large IT contracts.
"there is still a long way to go before government departments can honestly say that they have learned and properly applied the lessons from previous contracting failures."
CSC should be sued for breach of contract, sued for fraud, sued for damages.
A better question is when did MP3 players go mainstream? Then we get into the chicken and the egg discussion. Did Apple ride the MP3 wave that was already building or was it the "cool" factor of iPods that made MP3 players mainstream? Personally, I think that MP3 players would have gone mainstream without Apple, but Apple did have impeccable timing.
MP3 players went mainstream when the iTunes Store sold music and made it easy for regular people to buy music and get it to their device.
It's time to do three things in this country. 1) Introduce term limits for congress. Sorry, Feinbitch, McShame, you're time is up and it's clear you don't have the best interests in mind for our country. 2) Change campaign funding legislation and limit all contributions to $1000 from any company or private party. 3) We need to re-introduce Stocks (not the wall street kind) in DC and start putting these assholes in them for a week or two, I'm sure it will be a boost to the local economy in terms of travel and vendors selling rotten tomatoes.
I'm sure these changes will make you feel good and all... but you do realize these would all be Amendments to the Constitution - right?
1) Term limits - no mention of any kind of limit at all, not even ORIGINALLY for the President. The 22nd amendment isn't even that old.
2) Funding limits - I'd like to see that too, but it turns out petitioning the government is a FIRST amendment right, and it sucks to be not as wealthy/organized as lobbyists, but that isn't UNconstitutional for them. Recently upheld in the Citizens United case. There is a butthole of capitalism and the free market, and this may well be it.
3) Stockades - yeah except for that pesky 8th amendment.
#2 bugs me, but it isn't any different than how zealously gun lobbyists defend the 2nd amendment.
If so, where is the authorization of this activity by Congress, much less the American people?
Authorization is in USC Title 50.
So what if you have to pay someone to get off his ass and check an inconvenient readout manually: at least that's a job created in an otherwise machine-driven economy.
But that cuts into profits and corporations have shown repeatedly they'll throw anyone/anything under the bus to maintain their profit margin.
Sorry but this isn't whistleblowing - this is edging into sources and methods along the lines of what the Walker ring leaked.
So where exactly are you guaranteed to have your data left alone? China? Russia? Israel? France?
If it's that important, encrypt before it leaves your control. No matter what the terms of service say.
Over 50 BILLION dollars and they didn't catch and stop the Boston bombers.
It's easy to be a critic.
If they had stopped the bombers before they detonated the bombs, you'd claim a conspiracy or coverup meant to scare the public and gain sympathy (e.g. recent embassy closures), plus accuse them of spying on domestic targets.
The FBI is the agency for this situation and they aren't getting the entirety of the 50 billion.
Come on folks... read the damn info. The site says that "open source" data is "publicly available information appearing in print or electronic form". I'm gonna speculate part of the open source budget goes towards the salaries of linguists, computers for translation and the support staff, etc.
There's also a government website: www.opensource.gov
That was more the administration heavily pushing the conclusion they wanted to have reached.
The NSA is a deeply schizophrenic organization.
Not schizophrenic - they just have 2 conflicting missions. That would be signals intelligence (gather and decrypt) and information assurance (protect and defend).
It could be that a split and reorg would be good - say move the information assurance folks and merge them with DISA. Then clamp down on any out of control signals intelligence programs.
At a defining crossroads. My fellow Americans, now is the worst possible moment to wimp out.
But isn't that what all these sites that are shutting down are doing - wimping out?
I can understand Lavabit, but these others are just folding due to what exactly, uneasy feelings?
Alternatively, the most straightforward way to stop criticism from disaffected "fans" would be to give them what they want, rather than assuming that some designer somewhere knows better.
Because rabid angry "fans" always agree with each other and would all support the same thing.
More proof the government is always harmful.
Um, no. More like proof that business seeks to drain as many resources out of its customers as possible. They'll harvest you and toss you aside; after all it isn't like most are repeat customers they need to leave a positive impression with.
The one I can't figure out is iTunes. Why would anyone buy anything that you can get on Netflix for the price of many months of Netflix? The prices on iTunes are bonkers.
I buy a handful of shows on iTunes and think it's great. For about $40 a show (rough price for a season pass), I get the episodes a day after they air, in HD. I'd get more shows if they were available in this fashion (e.g. the ones I mention below)
Blaming iTunes for prices is like blaming Amazon for ebook prices - the reality is they have a floor somebody else sets.
Netflix is great but they are tied to an external release schedule as well - Homeland, Game of Thrones, Dexter, etc end up on Netflix on the studio release schedule, which for those shows is a year after the season ends.
So basically for me, there are 4-5 shows I'm willing to pay to watch NOW rather than wait a year. And no, I'm unwilling to download them. Of those, 2-3 are available on iTunes and I get them. Since I'm a cable cutter this works out cheaper and I am supporting this new business model I hope becomes more and more viable (or cable changes their ways but that will be tough as too many folks are slicing the pie - too many lose even if some are better off with change).
My old cable bill (TV portion) was about $80 a month. That's two shows a month off iTunes to break even. There aren't 24 shows a year I'm interested in buying, so iTunes for those that I am and Netflix for the rest works for me.
In addition to Jeff Flanagan's response, another factor is competing business interests. For every cloud provider that might lose revenue in the future, there are 2 defense contractors making profits now.