From the article: ===== The UTSC Health Studies Program has indicated that the course in question will not be taught in the 2015-16 academic year, or over the summer term.
As Provost of this academic institution, I must at all times respect the diversity of opinions and views of academic colleagues and sessional instructors. However, I do note with respect that the Deans of the University’s Faculty of Medicine and Dalla Lana School of Public Health have released a statement commenting on the education of their students regarding vaccinations. It includes the following:
“As deans of two of the health sciences faculties at the University of Toronto, we teach our students that vaccines are safe, effective and vital to children’s health. Vaccines are one of history’s most important and significant achievements in public health and medicine. The best evidence that science can provide proves that the health benefits of vaccines far outweigh their potential side effects, and we instruct our students accordingly.” =====
You can follow a suspect in plain clothes. You can photograph someone from a distance even if he's on his own personal property. You can follow someone in an unmarked car. You can observe someone from a helicopter or via satellite photo.
You can even send people moving traffic violation tickets based on photos taken via automatic cameras.
All of which you can do without a warrant because the subject is publicly visible.
So how is drone surveillance any different from a legal/ethical/moral standpoint?
And Fox News, of course, pushed a story that only referenced the part of the study that found that climate change "skeptics" scored higher (by one point, 51 to 50) on a test of general scientific literacy, proving once (and for Fox) that the "skeptics" know more about science than climate change "alarmists" and are therefore right to doubt anything related to climate change.
Fox News: the experts at picking the one cherry on the entire tree that satisfies them since 1993.
Let's not forget the two-way video wristwatch invented in the comic "Dick Tracy" by tech support guy Diet Smith in 1964. Many of us grew up dreaming of the day when we'd get to wear one of those things.
We already have Web organizations that do a pretty good job of cutting through BS -- Snopes.com and Factchecker.org to name two. The problem is not that we don't have objective arbiters of the truth, but that many people don't want anything other than confirmation of their existing biases and will label any group that doesn't do that as "biased" against their "truth."
Having the government sponsor the Truth Police will not give it any more credibility and may just make it less credible depending on who does the appointing.
Best example: the Supreme Court, which is supposedly the ultimate arbiter of justice. Justices used to get confirmed by huge bipartisan majorities until someone decided that controlling a majority of the Supremes was a way to achieve political control. The Web Truth Board would likely suffer a similar fate, only much faster..
My favorite Windows alternative back in the early 1990's was Wayfarer, a freeware replacement for the Windows v3.x Program Manager. Long before Microsoft figured out how to do tabbed and nested windowing, Wayfarer did both.
My favorite trick as to post a screenshot of the Windows Program Manager as the screen background and then turn off Progam Manager completely and replace it with Wayfarer, which would minimize to a single desktop icon. People would click on what looked like Program Manager icons with no result.
(Including the tech support guy who showed up unannounced at my desk one day to install software while I was out and was five minutes away from wiping and reinstalling my entire PC because he couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. I told him the next time he wanted to hijack my PC during the work day he needed to schedule an appointment so he didn't interfere with my work day.)
Ah, those were the days when we could still have some fun with customization. Now it's all "safe choices" or lock-downs, depending on how you look at it.
If it can be proven that a student has plagerized someone else's work to write a paper, can they then really turn around and claim copyright on their paper? Doesn't the author they "borrowed" from really hold the copyright?
I have two masters degrees, one of which is in IT, and I work for the Federal government.
I can't say what the environment is like in other than the Department of Defense or Department of Homeland Security, but when we get surveyed for our job qualifications we are always asked for information on specialized certifications (e.g. Project Management Professional, Contracting Officers Technical Representative, Acquisition Level 1, etc.) than can be earned or awarded through work experience or taking short training courses. No one for the last eight years has asked about advanced education.
My suspicion is that most of the people in civil service who deal with workforce management and job classificaion do not have advanced degrees and do not understand the amount of work and rigor that goes into earning a masters or PhD in relation to targeted training that fills a niche. While a PhD may get you a GS-11, a Bachelor's degree combined with a PMP Level 1 certification can get you in as a GS-13, which is a big pay and status boost.
The opposite is true in acedemia. If you don't have a PhD, don't even both applying for a college teaching job, and in some states one of the requirements to get public school tenure is to have a masters degree plus continuing education credits.
Business doesn't care as long as you can make them more money than they pay you.
Most people seem to hire people who resemble them. So, figure out where you want to work, find out how the people who run the system were trained, and get yourself trained so you look like them.
Maybe the Red Spot is a timer, and when it finally disappears something really interesting will happen, like:
- God (in his Flying Spaghetti Monster incarnation) will appear and prove Its existence once and for all - Jupiter will emit a cosmic alarm announcing that our solar system is finally finished - Jupiter will ignite and become a small star - Mankind will achieve true enlightenment (as every nuclear weapon on the planet goes off simiultaneously)
I haven't noticed any new pop-ups lately, but that could be because I use Firefox with NoScript set to allow only those scripts I explicitly approve.
Yes, it's an anal-retentive control freak approach. But it keeps most ad crap from cluttering up my browser and has the added bonus of probably annoying many of the people who might try to use Web scripts to monitor my Web browsing. If I find I need to use a script on a page for functionality, I give it temporary permission that goes away once I close the browser.
I browse this way because they really are out to get me.
I think AFCyber may just be on hold because a new Chief of Staff of the Air Force started work yesterday and he want to see what this is before it goes any further. It's likely this may be part of a larger review of all the services cyber-warfare programs to make sure they don't overlap or compete in the same space.
Also, this new CoS isn't a fighter pilot like the last 20 years of AF leadership, he's a special ops guy who flew cargo aircraft. He's probably more interested in business management than flash and, with a special ops background, may belive that if you're going to build a secret ninja hacker cyberforce, you might want to do it with a somewhat lower public profile.
The answer to why we don't have faster broadband speeds is simple: scarcity pays.
It is not in the interests of U.S. telecom providers to roll out high-speed bandwidth all at once. Thus we have a tiered service model, with people paying a little for 1Mb connections and substantially more to get higher speeds, regardless of what the telecom carriers' networks can handle.
Granted, some of the scarcity may be real and based on telecom companies dragging their feet on upgrading, but even if they could carry 100 times the traffic the can now it still would be in their corporate interest to artificially create a bandwidth scarcity to keep prices high.
It didn't take Senator Feingold long to announce that he's working on legislation to mitigate the search policy. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/content/article/2008/08/01/laptops.html)
One other note: any terrorist who wants to sneak information or applications into the US is not going to carry it through a border checkpoint. If they're that terminally stupid, they're probably a plant carrying false information. The only reason drug dealers and coyotes (human smugglers) cross the border with their cargo is because their cargo consists of physical objects. There are much easier ways to get digital files into the US.
This article from Government Executive (http://www.govexec.com/features/0608-01/0608-01s2.htm) may shed some light on why the provision is in the bill. It's all about following the money.
I don't know why everyone's so up in arms about the government tracking purchase data. They can't be any more evil with our transaction data than what Wal-Mart, you local chain mega-grocery, the phone company, or the banks that issues our credit cards do with it in the name of capitalism, commerce, and their 1st ammendment "right" to innundate us with junk mail, spam, and credit card offers.
Slashdot Mirror
Fortunately, wiser heads have finally prevailed:
http://www.provost.utoronto.ca...
From the article:
=====
The UTSC Health Studies Program has indicated that the course in question will not be taught in the 2015-16 academic year, or over the summer term.
As Provost of this academic institution, I must at all times respect the diversity of opinions and views of academic colleagues and sessional instructors. However, I do note with respect that the Deans of the University’s Faculty of Medicine and Dalla Lana School of Public Health have released a statement commenting on the education of their students regarding vaccinations. It includes the following:
“As deans of two of the health sciences faculties at the University of Toronto, we teach our students that vaccines are safe, effective and vital to children’s health. Vaccines are one of history’s most important and significant achievements in public health and medicine. The best evidence that science can provide proves that the health benefits of vaccines far outweigh their potential side effects, and we instruct our students accordingly.”
=====
Isn't this the same thing Wakefield was trying to prove before he committed research fraud and started the whole "vaccines cause autism" nonsense?
Every student entering 6th grade should read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card and "A Wrinkle In Time."
You can follow a suspect in plain clothes. You can photograph someone from a distance even if he's on his own personal property. You can follow someone in an unmarked car. You can observe someone from a helicopter or via satellite photo.
You can even send people moving traffic violation tickets based on photos taken via automatic cameras.
All of which you can do without a warrant because the subject is publicly visible.
So how is drone surveillance any different from a legal/ethical/moral standpoint?
And Fox News, of course, pushed a story that only referenced the part of the study that found that climate change "skeptics" scored higher (by one point, 51 to 50) on a test of general scientific literacy, proving once (and for Fox) that the "skeptics" know more about science than climate change "alarmists" and are therefore right to doubt anything related to climate change.
Fox News: the experts at picking the one cherry on the entire tree that satisfies them since 1993.
No, I wouldn't want to demean the memory of Frank Zappa by associating him with Newton G.
A cheesy '70s sci-fi TV show derivative seems more appropriate.
Newt Gingrich's new Secret Service code name:
MOONBAT ALPHA
"What!?! Comment my code? You question my honor! I'll kill you where you stand!"
-- Mukluk, Klingon Programmer
"Is it worth trying to fix a system that isn't broken?"
It is to the people who sell electronic voting systems. And they apparently have better lobbyists than the average voter.
Let's not forget the two-way video wristwatch invented in the comic "Dick Tracy" by tech support guy Diet Smith in 1964. Many of us grew up dreaming of the day when we'd get to wear one of those things.
We already have Web organizations that do a pretty good job of cutting through BS -- Snopes.com and Factchecker.org to name two. The problem is not that we don't have objective arbiters of the truth, but that many people don't want anything other than confirmation of their existing biases and will label any group that doesn't do that as "biased" against their "truth."
Having the government sponsor the Truth Police will not give it any more credibility and may just make it less credible depending on who does the appointing.
Best example: the Supreme Court, which is supposedly the ultimate arbiter of justice. Justices used to get confirmed by huge bipartisan majorities until someone decided that controlling a majority of the Supremes was a way to achieve political control. The Web Truth Board would likely suffer a similar fate, only much faster..
My favorite Windows alternative back in the early 1990's was Wayfarer, a freeware replacement for the Windows v3.x Program Manager. Long before Microsoft figured out how to do tabbed and nested windowing, Wayfarer did both.
My favorite trick as to post a screenshot of the Windows Program Manager as the screen background and then turn off Progam Manager completely and replace it with Wayfarer, which would minimize to a single desktop icon. People would click on what looked like Program Manager icons with no result.
(Including the tech support guy who showed up unannounced at my desk one day to install software while I was out and was five minutes away from wiping and reinstalling my entire PC because he couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. I told him the next time he wanted to hijack my PC during the work day he needed to schedule an appointment so he didn't interfere with my work day.)
Ah, those were the days when we could still have some fun with customization. Now it's all "safe choices" or lock-downs, depending on how you look at it.
If it can be proven that a student has plagerized someone else's work to write a paper, can they then really turn around and claim copyright on their paper? Doesn't the author they "borrowed" from really hold the copyright?
...to buy an iPod. Those cunning devils at Apple have found a legal way to sell portable incendiary devices! Who wouldn't want one now?
I have two masters degrees, one of which is in IT, and I work for the Federal government.
I can't say what the environment is like in other than the Department of Defense or Department of Homeland Security, but when we get surveyed for our job qualifications we are always asked for information on specialized certifications (e.g. Project Management Professional, Contracting Officers Technical Representative, Acquisition Level 1, etc.) than can be earned or awarded through work experience or taking short training courses. No one for the last eight years has asked about advanced education.
My suspicion is that most of the people in civil service who deal with workforce management and job classificaion do not have advanced degrees and do not understand the amount of work and rigor that goes into earning a masters or PhD in relation to targeted training that fills a niche. While a PhD may get you a GS-11, a Bachelor's degree combined with a PMP Level 1 certification can get you in as a GS-13, which is a big pay and status boost.
The opposite is true in acedemia. If you don't have a PhD, don't even both applying for a college teaching job, and in some states one of the requirements to get public school tenure is to have a masters degree plus continuing education credits.
Business doesn't care as long as you can make them more money than they pay you.
Most people seem to hire people who resemble them. So, figure out where you want to work, find out how the people who run the system were trained, and get yourself trained so you look like them.
Maybe the Red Spot is a timer, and when it finally disappears something really interesting will happen, like:
- God (in his Flying Spaghetti Monster incarnation) will appear and prove Its existence once and for all
- Jupiter will emit a cosmic alarm announcing that our solar system is finally finished
- Jupiter will ignite and become a small star
- Mankind will achieve true enlightenment (as every nuclear weapon on the planet goes off simiultaneously)
Any other ideas?
I haven't noticed any new pop-ups lately, but that could be because I use Firefox with NoScript set to allow only those scripts I explicitly approve.
Yes, it's an anal-retentive control freak approach. But it keeps most ad crap from cluttering up my browser and has the added bonus of probably annoying many of the people who might try to use Web scripts to monitor my Web browsing. If I find I need to use a script on a page for functionality, I give it temporary permission that goes away once I close the browser.
I browse this way because they really are out to get me.
I think AFCyber may just be on hold because a new Chief of Staff of the Air Force started work yesterday and he want to see what this is before it goes any further. It's likely this may be part of a larger review of all the services cyber-warfare programs to make sure they don't overlap or compete in the same space.
Also, this new CoS isn't a fighter pilot like the last 20 years of AF leadership, he's a special ops guy who flew cargo aircraft. He's probably more interested in business management than flash and, with a special ops background, may belive that if you're going to build a secret ninja hacker cyberforce, you might want to do it with a somewhat lower public profile.
The answer to why we don't have faster broadband speeds is simple: scarcity pays.
It is not in the interests of U.S. telecom providers to roll out high-speed bandwidth all at once. Thus we have a tiered service model, with people paying a little for 1Mb connections and substantially more to get higher speeds, regardless of what the telecom carriers' networks can handle.
Granted, some of the scarcity may be real and based on telecom companies dragging their feet on upgrading, but even if they could carry 100 times the traffic the can now it still would be in their corporate interest to artificially create a bandwidth scarcity to keep prices high.
Maybe they just wanted to make sure that:
1. They patched it correctly, and...
2. That they didn't inadvertently introduce other problems with the patch.
Then again, how long did they know about the problem before it was publicly announced?
It didn't take Senator Feingold long to announce that he's working on legislation to mitigate the search policy. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/content/article/2008/08/01/laptops.html)
One other note: any terrorist who wants to sneak information or applications into the US is not going to carry it through a border checkpoint. If they're that terminally stupid, they're probably a plant carrying false information. The only reason drug dealers and coyotes (human smugglers) cross the border with their cargo is because their cargo consists of physical objects. There are much easier ways to get digital files into the US.
Why do I suddenly see an image of Vogons clubbing a laptop?
Two questions:
1. How did they know she had it?
2. Did they realize that just "smashing the computer" would not necessarily prevent recovery of the data?
Big Brother. Only this time he's not just taking your stuff to play games on it.
(Or maybe the are. DHS doesn't allow any games on their desktops. Maybe this just lets them play Minesweeper for a while.)
What happened to needing "probable cause" as a justification for a search?
...you disable his account *before* you tell him he's fired.
This article from Government Executive (http://www.govexec.com/features/0608-01/0608-01s2.htm) may shed some light on why the provision is in the bill. It's all about following the money.
I don't know why everyone's so up in arms about the government tracking purchase data. They can't be any more evil with our transaction data than what Wal-Mart, you local chain mega-grocery, the phone company, or the banks that issues our credit cards do with it in the name of capitalism, commerce, and their 1st ammendment "right" to innundate us with junk mail, spam, and credit card offers.