Proposal: if your minor child is convicted of a crime you get hit with a proportion of the sentence dependent on the age of the child. (100% at 5 years old, 0% at 18, not sure what the interpolation function should be).
Break-In At SAIC Risks ID Theft
Computers Held Personal Data on Employee-Owners
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 12, 2005; Page E01
Some of the nation's most influential former military and intelligence officials have been informed in recent days that they are at risk of identity theft after a break-in at a major government contractor netted computers containing the Social Security numbers and other personal information about tens of thousands of past and present company employees.
The contractor, employee-owned Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego, handles sensitive government contracts, including many in information security. It has a reputation for hiring Washington's most powerful figures when they leave the government, and its payroll has been studded with former secretaries of defense, CIA directors and White House counterterrorism advisers.
Those former officials -- along with the rest of a 45,000-person workforce in which a significant percentage of employees hold government security clearances -- were informed last week that their private information may have been breached and they need to take steps to protect themselves from fraud.
David Kay, who was chief weapons inspector in Iraq after nearly a decade as an executive at SAIC, said he has devoted more than a dozen hours to shutting down accounts and safeguarding his finances. He said the successful theft of personal data, by thieves who smashed windows to gain access, does not speak well of a company that is devoted to keeping the government's secrets secure.
"I just find it unexplainable how anyone could be so casual with such vital information. It's not like we're just now learning that identity theft is a problem," said Kay, who lives in Northern Virginia.
About 16,000 SAIC employees work in the Washington area.
Bobby Ray Inman, former deputy director of the CIA and a former director at SAIC, agreed. "It's worrisome," said Inman, who also received notification of the theft last week. "If the security is sloppy, it raises questions."
Ben Haddad, an SAIC spokesman, said yesterday that the Jan. 25 theft, which the company announced last week, occurred in an administrative building where no sensitive contracting work is performed. Haddad said the company does not know whether the thieves targeted specific computers containing employee information or if they were simply after hardware to sell for cash. In either case, the company is taking no chances.
"We're taking this extremely seriously," Haddad said. "It's certainly not something that would reflect well on any company, let alone a company that's involved in information security. But what can I say? We're doing everything we can to get to the bottom of it."
Gary Hassen of the San Diego Police Department said there were "no leads."
Haddad said surveillance cameras are in the building where the theft took place, but he did not know whether they caught the perpetrators on tape. He also did not know whether the information that was on the pilfered computers had been encrypted.
The stolen information included names, Social Security numbers, addresses, telephone numbers and records of financial transactions. It was stored in a database of past and present SAIC stockholders. SAIC is one of the nation's largest employee-owned companies, with workers each receiving the option to buy SAIC stock through an internal brokerage division known as Bull Inc.
Haddad said the company has been trying through letters and e-mails to get in touch with everyone who has held company stock within the past decade, though he acknowledged that hasn't been easy since many have since left the company.
He said the company would take steps to ensure stockholder information is better protected in the future, but he declined to be specific.
The theft comes at a time when the company, which depends on the federal government for more
A number of posters mentioned showing the world how stupid copyright was by copyrighting your lawns and designs on the house or roof. If a sufficient number of people do it, we will soon have to start paying for the many free geographic services our tax dollars are currently providing. The govt will continue gathering this data for 'strategic' reasons but little by little we will lose access to many of the services we fund.
Copyrights like this only double-tax the society that permit it. A creator of a work should be paid when he sells his work and taxed for the security his society provides. Greed and political savvy created copyrights, an educated society may abolish them.
I didn't realize the GNAA is now trolling the self proclaimed slashdot geeks with 'studies'. Man, those GNAA's are getting good.
To fail the criteria of an exam is failure. Let's not try and pretend it's indicative of great ability.
-Either words have meaning or they don't.
Double speak and Double think forever
Battlestar Galactica was the best sci-fi show when it first aired all those years ago, I for switched to the trek series only because galactica stopped airing. These fanatics are funding a creative endeavor instead of blowing crap up or actively hindering science. Finally, a positive spin on the word fanatic.
instead of gibbering about with colloquialsms that amount to duck speak, the editors could have used a single word 'inadequate' instead of 'make the cut(pun honestly not intended'.
Go ahead mod me offtopic
Words either have meaning or they don't.
I'm impressed they didn't grunt or chew up the page with text of 1st ammendment on it. Heck! it's impressive they can read!
I think I'll seriously consider moving to India for their freedom, atleast it's easy to disappear into a thicket of a billion people.
US companies supplying PCs to foreign governments
on
The Hundred-Buck PC
·
· Score: 0
Given the ability for this to compromise secure data held by foreign governments I don't see why the US government would see fit to help foot part of the bill on this venture. Given that this has already occurred with xerox machines in the past I doubt any government is going to be really thrilled about this deal.
I find it absolutely hilarious that several people on slashdot bring up the 'laws of robotics' or 'the time machine' when coming up with reasons why it is morally wrong to proceed with scientific research. These are works of fiction, much like the various religious texts. To flame religion and embrace modern sci-fi as gospel is the best kind of 'irony'
This only proves that people will resort to anything even fictional accounts to give the stamp of moral authority when fighting change in a new amoral arena of knowledge.
If even educated 'geeks' act this way I can find no fault with the religious activists, since it is apparently human nature and not the nurture the geeks pompously praise themselves for possessing.
Bravo! I was under the impression I was the only one with these views.
The reason things exist as they do is for a simple reason: Societies exist for the common defense of its members. It is, by its very charter an association to commit violence, whether the opposing number are wild animals or other societies is of little consequence. High society exists for the purpose of fleecing low society and is institutionalized in the form of government. They cannot exist without this institutionalization, separation and accumulation of power. This allows them to create two groups just like two nations and they have their own code of ethics, in which many actions we consider immoral are moral. In addition it should be evident that it is impossible to remain outside of all society because you will become a target. Since you can't beat them join them. This is the essence of any societal participation. It is not voluntary in the modern legal sense since it is made under duress, but from a survivalist standpoint it is the only rational choice to avoid death.
From these initial precepts it should be evident that there is no possibility of having a great society on any time scale under any form of enlightened government.
Firefox is still inappropriate for many foreign language websites that embed their fonts in their webpage. Firefox has yet to get licensing to use the (bitstream? embedded) system to display webpages. This is the only reason I haven't switched to firefox.
There is very little difference between the present nature of copyrights and the older practice of trade guilds. For a time trade guilds prospered and their monopolies on trivial enhancements were important until modern industrial practices wiped them out. Piracy today is equivalent to trying to break the rules of guild societies.
It's the wrong way to go about it because it's built on a close knit community of people who realize they will soon be obsoleted if the secret of their trivial enhancements become widely known, and they WILL fight long and hard to defend it.
Working towards automation of code generation should up end their stranglehold on such institutions. And from the flames the inanity of pop culture has been getting i'd say automation of mass culture generation should also be possible in the near future;-)
The problem with DRM
When I was reading 1984 I always wondered how they could instantly change all the newspapers and constantly rewrite history and make it up to date. Since all the newspapers would have already been distributed. There would be traces left.
A combined Hardware and software DRM seems to allow this. Since you are giving material to people without actually giving it to them, you can always change it. And distribution systems will definitely favor DRM instead of physical media because it is so much more 'convenient'. If a license to temporarily view something with various restrictions becomes the dominant form of ownership, freedom is definitely going down the tubes. It wouldnt be so much a dictatorship but the replacement of personal artifacts and memory by a culturally/centrally owned artifacts and memories. We wouldnt have a license to remember what we forgot. Pretty isn't it?
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever." 1984
Slashdot Mirror
damn, i wish i had points. Mod this guy up =)
Maybe the editors have a *go with me on this*
:-D
Slashdot Shuffle (TM) system for the articles they post.
It would explain the dupes and the lack of quality control with one theory.
I keed, I keed
Defining Ajax
Ajax isn't a technology. It's really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways.
It's like the marketing folks went plumb crazy generating this ad that was posted onto the slashdot front page.
Tell me: how is this news?
I wonder if the type of people that came up with 'blink' are now writing new crypto protocols.
I think I'll just withdraw my deposit in gold bricks and sleep on it.
Proposal: if your minor child is convicted of a crime you get hit with a proportion of the sentence dependent on the age of the child. (100% at 5 years old, 0% at 18, not sure what the interpolation function should be).
They do this in the Middle East.
Mod Parent up as funny :D
it was a joke :-P
Break-In At SAIC Risks ID Theft Computers Held Personal Data on Employee-Owners
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 12, 2005; Page E01
Some of the nation's most influential former military and intelligence officials have been informed in recent days that they are at risk of identity theft after a break-in at a major government contractor netted computers containing the Social Security numbers and other personal information about tens of thousands of past and present company employees.
The contractor, employee-owned Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego, handles sensitive government contracts, including many in information security. It has a reputation for hiring Washington's most powerful figures when they leave the government, and its payroll has been studded with former secretaries of defense, CIA directors and White House counterterrorism advisers.
Those former officials -- along with the rest of a 45,000-person workforce in which a significant percentage of employees hold government security clearances -- were informed last week that their private information may have been breached and they need to take steps to protect themselves from fraud.
David Kay, who was chief weapons inspector in Iraq after nearly a decade as an executive at SAIC, said he has devoted more than a dozen hours to shutting down accounts and safeguarding his finances. He said the successful theft of personal data, by thieves who smashed windows to gain access, does not speak well of a company that is devoted to keeping the government's secrets secure.
"I just find it unexplainable how anyone could be so casual with such vital information. It's not like we're just now learning that identity theft is a problem," said Kay, who lives in Northern Virginia.
About 16,000 SAIC employees work in the Washington area.
Bobby Ray Inman, former deputy director of the CIA and a former director at SAIC, agreed. "It's worrisome," said Inman, who also received notification of the theft last week. "If the security is sloppy, it raises questions."
Ben Haddad, an SAIC spokesman, said yesterday that the Jan. 25 theft, which the company announced last week, occurred in an administrative building where no sensitive contracting work is performed. Haddad said the company does not know whether the thieves targeted specific computers containing employee information or if they were simply after hardware to sell for cash. In either case, the company is taking no chances.
"We're taking this extremely seriously," Haddad said. "It's certainly not something that would reflect well on any company, let alone a company that's involved in information security. But what can I say? We're doing everything we can to get to the bottom of it."
Gary Hassen of the San Diego Police Department said there were "no leads."
Haddad said surveillance cameras are in the building where the theft took place, but he did not know whether they caught the perpetrators on tape. He also did not know whether the information that was on the pilfered computers had been encrypted.
The stolen information included names, Social Security numbers, addresses, telephone numbers and records of financial transactions. It was stored in a database of past and present SAIC stockholders. SAIC is one of the nation's largest employee-owned companies, with workers each receiving the option to buy SAIC stock through an internal brokerage division known as Bull Inc.
Haddad said the company has been trying through letters and e-mails to get in touch with everyone who has held company stock within the past decade, though he acknowledged that hasn't been easy since many have since left the company.
He said the company would take steps to ensure stockholder information is better protected in the future, but he declined to be specific.
The theft comes at a time when the company, which depends on the federal government for more
OH YEA if they only used biometrics everything would be safe. It would be so much harder to steal that many thumbs
OMG! I thought the news articles advertising ads was limited to advertising super bowl ads. Guess I was wrong :-\
A number of posters mentioned showing the world how stupid copyright was by copyrighting your lawns and designs on the house or roof. If a sufficient number of people do it, we will soon have to start paying for the many free geographic services our tax dollars are currently providing. The govt will continue gathering this data for 'strategic' reasons but little by little we will lose access to many of the services we fund.
Copyrights like this only double-tax the society that permit it. A creator of a work should be paid when he sells his work and taxed for the security his society provides. Greed and political savvy created copyrights, an educated society may abolish them.
One hit wonders watch out.
I didn't realize the GNAA is now trolling the self proclaimed slashdot geeks with 'studies'. Man, those GNAA's are getting good. To fail the criteria of an exam is failure. Let's not try and pretend it's indicative of great ability. -Either words have meaning or they don't. Double speak and Double think forever
Battlestar Galactica was the best sci-fi show when it first aired all those years ago, I for switched to the trek series only because galactica stopped airing.
These fanatics are funding a creative endeavor instead of blowing crap up or actively hindering science. Finally, a positive spin on the word fanatic.
Palladium, DRM, eID, Passport, Windoze. Billy boy how could we lose if we bet on YOU!
instead of gibbering about with colloquialsms that amount to duck speak, the editors could have used a single word 'inadequate' instead of 'make the cut(pun honestly not intended'. Go ahead mod me offtopic Words either have meaning or they don't.
I'm impressed they didn't grunt or chew up the page with text of 1st ammendment on it. Heck! it's impressive they can read!
I think I'll seriously consider moving to India for their freedom, atleast it's easy to disappear into a thicket of a billion people.
Given the ability for this to compromise secure data held by foreign governments I don't see why the US government would see fit to help foot part of the bill on this venture. Given that this has already occurred with xerox machines in the past I doubt any government is going to be really thrilled about this deal.
I find it absolutely hilarious that several people on slashdot bring up the 'laws of robotics' or 'the time machine' when coming up with reasons why it is morally wrong to proceed with scientific research. These are works of fiction, much like the various religious texts. To flame religion and embrace modern sci-fi as gospel is the best kind of 'irony'
This only proves that people will resort to anything even fictional accounts to give the stamp of moral authority when fighting change in a new amoral arena of knowledge.
If even educated 'geeks' act this way I can find no fault with the religious activists, since it is apparently human nature and not the nurture the geeks pompously praise themselves for possessing.
Bravo! I was under the impression I was the only one with these views.
The reason things exist as they do is for a simple reason: Societies exist for the common defense of its members. It is, by its very charter an association to commit violence, whether the opposing number are wild animals or other societies is of little consequence. High society exists for the purpose of fleecing low society and is institutionalized in the form of government. They cannot exist without this institutionalization, separation and accumulation of power. This allows them to create two groups just like two nations and they have their own code of ethics, in which many actions we consider immoral are moral.
In addition it should be evident that it is impossible to remain outside of all society because you will become a target. Since you can't beat them join them. This is the essence of any societal participation. It is not voluntary in the modern legal sense since it is made under duress, but from a survivalist standpoint it is the only rational choice to avoid death.
From these initial precepts it should be evident that there is no possibility of having a great society on any time scale under any form of enlightened government.
Firefox is still inappropriate for many foreign language websites that embed their fonts in their webpage. Firefox has yet to get licensing to use the (bitstream? embedded) system to display webpages.
This is the only reason I haven't switched to firefox.
There is very little difference between the present nature of copyrights and the older practice of trade guilds. For a time trade guilds prospered and their monopolies on trivial enhancements were important until modern industrial practices wiped them out. Piracy today is equivalent to trying to break the rules of guild societies.
;-)
It's the wrong way to go about it because it's built on a close knit community of people who realize they will soon be obsoleted if the secret of their trivial enhancements become widely known, and they WILL fight long and hard to defend it.
Working towards automation of code generation should up end their stranglehold on such institutions. And from the flames the inanity of pop culture has been getting i'd say automation of mass culture generation should also be possible in the near future
you mean 'restraint' word nazi: 1 Ingolfeke: 0
first post!! w00t
No, I find as a geek my run of luck is far worse than the norm. First post
The problem with DRM When I was reading 1984 I always wondered how they could instantly change all the newspapers and constantly rewrite history and make it up to date. Since all the newspapers would have already been distributed. There would be traces left. A combined Hardware and software DRM seems to allow this. Since you are giving material to people without actually giving it to them, you can always change it. And distribution systems will definitely favor DRM instead of physical media because it is so much more 'convenient'. If a license to temporarily view something with various restrictions becomes the dominant form of ownership, freedom is definitely going down the tubes. It wouldnt be so much a dictatorship but the replacement of personal artifacts and memory by a culturally/centrally owned artifacts and memories. We wouldnt have a license to remember what we forgot. Pretty isn't it? "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever." 1984