Sadly the reality of big organisations is that cutting the slack is needed from time to time and usually this does not happen without brutal surgeon that just cuts and cuts and cuts. If patient is relatively healthy and has some luck the lean company can actually be better than before.
That would be great if they actually cut the slack. From an MBA's perspective R&D and IT are slack. There are no black numbers to directly offset the red numbers therefore it is slack and can be cut. Now the bloated inefficient sales department, they have lots of black numbers so no cutting there. They get bonuses. Sales people continue to to oversell and lie about what can be delivered and then blame IT and R&D for not delivering what they told the sales people couldn't be delivered. Again from an MBA's perspective this is a problem in IT and R&D. The sales were there so the sales department did their job and got huge bonuses. But IT and R&D failed so we cut their salaries and lay them off.
That's how it works when the bean counters are in charge.
Objectivists are perfectly happy with the government spying on everyone.
I find it amazing the number of people who make statements declaring ideas like this represent Ayn Rand's philosophy when in reality it is exactly what she was railing against. Here is one quote that shows you are utterly clueless about what objectivism is supposed to represent. Ayn Rand:
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
A Democracy cannot function were the "Democratic" government is wholesale monitoring the people it is supposed to be representing especially when that monitoring is kept secret from the governed.
A Democracy cannot function where the "Democratic" government keeps critical secrets from the governed. It's not possible to make informed decisions in voting when you're intentionally uninformed and misinformed.
A government "elected" based on propaganda and untruths is not a "Democratic" government. This is especially so where exposing the propaganda and untruths can only be done under threat of imprisonment, torture and even death.
One who exposes such actions and secrets is not betraying the Democracy. They are betraying an oppressive undemocratic government. Given the constitution they're suppose to be governing under in the US I dare say they are exposing an illegal government.
Probably -- but it would depend on the cost of allowing a terrorist plot to succeed.
That argument is assuming that Orwellian monitoring of all citizens is the only way to stop a terrorist plot. A strong argument could be made that a more focused operation would be more effective. It would almost certainly be more cost effective. That is of course if the Orwellian monitoring of all citizens was actually for the purpose of stopping terrorism. Although I guess it is if you class any form of dissent or challenge of the powers that be terrorism.
I don't mean to defend the program, but what makes you so certain it does not (and cannot) detect terrorist plots?
Have you seen ANY evidence it does? If it was don't you think the government would be trotting out some credible cases (the ones mentioned so far have been pretty easily debunked) in defense of these programs? You're asking us to have faith that it actually does that in the absence of any supporting evidence. You have the guys caught with their hands in the cookie jar preaching to us about how many terrorist attacks this has prevented and how many lives have been saved yet they haven't produced a credible shred of evidence to support that as of yet.
who are they protecting with all of this data mining?
It's to monitor the enemy and stop them from nefarious activities. Who these enemies are is left as an exercise for the student. (Hint: Who are they monitoring?).
Verizon chooses not too. Obviously, they cannot think their customers do not value Netflix. Clearly, they don't care much about their customers -- or there's an alterior motive; or just plain ignorance, blindness, and stupidity.
No Verizon chooses not to because they can't charge $100 a month for cable video in a free market with actual competition. Thus they stop delivering other video service over the internet eliminating the competition.
No, it is not. The job of an ISP is to deliver traffic from their paying customers to other paying customers, or hand off the traffic to another ISP to deliver to their own customers. In this case, one ISP (Cogent) expects another ISP (Verizon) to absorb infrastructure costs because they failed to plan for external capacity requirements of their customers.
No. You're wrong. Verizon is getting paid by all their customers who are the ones requesting the Netflix traffic. By your logic Cogent should be getting paid by Verizon for delivering Netflix traffic to all those Verizon customers. This is the whole point of peering agreements.
The reason Verizon wants to throttle video traffic to their internet customers is because it's forcing competition in their market for cable video. Verizon can only charge $100 a month for cable video if there is no competition.
Essentially, Netflix pays Cogent as their "ISP". Cogent probably won that deal with their ridiculously low pricing. And now Cogent expects Verizon to invest in their network so that they can act as an extension of the Cogent network, through a "peering" agreement.
And there is a whole lot of individuals who pay Verizon for internet access including access to Netflix. That traffic is going over Verizon's network because Verizon customers who are paying Verizon for that network traffic are requesting it.
The part you seem to be missing here is that Netflix is eating into Verizon's ability to charge obscene rates of $100 a month just to watch movies. Cause, you see, it use to be paying customers had very limited options for accessing video therefore allowing cable TV companies to charge those obscene rates due to a lack of a competitive market. So now that Verizon is facing some competition for their cash cow video market they're going to dictate what they allow their customers to access on the internet to eliminate that competition.
So lets sum up. Verizon is getting paid for that bandwidth from the other direction. They want to restrict certain uses uses of that bandwidth to maintain their monopoly control over another market.
The Government is doing what we said they could (and in some cases insisted) do.
Yeah. I certainly voted for the allow the government violate the constitution and secretly interpret the law however they want and lie to congress about it provision. And of course the rest of my patriotic American comrades voted for too. It had that rider on it that allowed the executive branch to detain US citizens indefinitely without due process and even murder them if the president thought it was important. I check that part twice.
Seems the guy has decided that he wants to fight this out in the court of public opinion.
Yeah, cause everyone knows the US government hasn't publish any information or press releases related to his prosecution. Add we won't mention how silent the MPAA/RIAA trolls have been about the whole thing.
Seriously, this guy is a criminal and should face the consequences of his actions.
No, he is not. But since you're such a rule of law guy I guess you would agree that the officials that lied to congress and illegally sped on US citizens should "face the consequences".
That's the spirit! Nothing will ever make a difference so let's do as we always have done. Do you see the pattern?
That's the spirit! Nothing will ever make a difference so let's do as we always have done. Do you see the pattern?
That's the spirit! Nothing will ever make a difference
Not at all what I'm advocating. Just advocating that voting for one or the other isn't helping either. I'm reminded of a scene form the movie 'Moon Over Parador'. 2 Guards are talking:
[Military Man 1] Who are you going to vote for?
[Military Man 2] I'm going to vote blue.
[Military Man 1] Vote for who you want. This is a free dictatorship.
Funny that most of the post WWII communist states claimed a 99% voter turnout in elections. "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice". I think the fact that less then half the eligible people vote makes a pretty strong statement. They recognize voting isn't going to make any difference. Voting for Obama's "Open Government" platform did a lot, didn't it? I'd argue that no one voting exposes fact that this isn't really a democratic state in a manner the government can't refute. At least not yet. Not until we've reached the "war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength " state.
so let's do as we always have done.
Seems to me voting for one of the clones running is doing exactly this.
Do you see the pattern?
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I recommend a history course, where you learn the interesting parts about governments picking out groups (external, or small internal e.g. Jews) and focus popular hatred on them, for the purpose of distracting people from their shitty lives, made and kept so by the government itself, used as an argument for reducing freedom rather than increasing it.
Don't really think I need a history course. I have 40 or 50 history books on my shelves and those are just the ones I own. Left vs. right in the US is a classic example of that strategy somewhat evolved to incorporate the military divide and conquer strategy. No need for an external enemy (yes, the Jews in Nazi Germany were an external enemy) to focus on. The enemy is those evil Nazi Republicans or those evil Socialist Democrats while in reality they are both wholly controlled by the same monetary interests. Of course this is speaking in vague generalities and the reality is far more complex.
It actually worked well. When Hungary met with Austria to lower the controls at the hungarian-austrian border, so many East Germans flet, that the remaining people in Germany lost all fear against their own government, and started large demonstrations whose first slogan were "we will stay!" - and this was meant as a threat, and it was understood as a threat, causing the unravelling of East Germany.
It actually worked well. When Hungary met with Austria to lower the controls at the hungarian-austrian border, so many East Germans flet, that the remaining people in Germany lost all fear against their own government, and started large demonstrations whose first slogan were "we will stay!" - and this was meant as a threat, and it was understood as a threat, causing the unravelling of East Germany.
I'm missing something here. What I get from that is the people that stayed are the ones that instigated change not the ones that left. And there was a whole lot of other stuff happening at that time also.
Dude thanks, what you've done requires real courage and people like you change the world for the better. You will probably be dragged through the mud. That inteligence aparatus which you helped build and outed is working right now very hard to get dirt on you, and will probably succeed. If there is no dirt to be gotten it will be manufactured.
R'amen to that. I just hope he is reading this and seeing he has at least some support. Given his geek cred I'm guessing he is.
I think coming out into the public was the smartest thing you could of done, i doubt you will be rendered because the damage is already done.
I agree with the first but think you're completely wrong in the second. Given the Obama administration's record on whistleblowers this man will be persecuted and prosecuted to the full extent capable of the most powerful government ever. I fear he will end a martyr. But the hope is this man and his will actions become a rallying cry for freedom.
They've learned (i hope) from the Manning case that locking you up into the loney bin and psychologically torturing you just make it worst.
Sadly I don't see that being the case. Even in a place with discourse above that of normal intelligence such as this it seems the majority think that Manning committed treason and thus the US government is justified in it's treatment of him.
Snowden was much smarter and it appears he learned from Manning's example. He was careful in what he released making sure to limit it exclusively to documents that showed illegal actions of the government without putting any individuals at risk. One would be very hard pressed to argue this is anything but a whistleblower exposing illegal actions by the government.
I voted for Obama because he is the kind of person who takes action.
He took action alright. He's prosecuted more whistle blowers than every president before him combined and presided over and defended creating the most extensive domestic surveillance program in the history of governments. He has Nixon beat by a long shot and Nixon was impeached for what he did.
Presidents and executives are supposed to DO something, not preside over the nation like an administrator.
Not when that doing something is usurping the constitution and move further towards the police state. I'd rather have them do nothing.
Actually, failure to vote for third parties is the primary reason they're able to get away with stuff like this.
What third party? Do you really think that would make any difference? Under the current system anyone elected is controlled or made irrelevant. Until the money is removed from the electoral process this won't change.
you can bet they'd be picking up pieces of those platforms in order to continue out-competing third parties
One of Obama's primary platforms was "Open Government". That worked out well, didn't it? Kinda hard to make an informed decision when most of the important information is secret and anyone who exposes it is thrown in jail or worse (see Bradly Manning).
Please understand that the "left vs right" thing is just a distraction. Both parties are happily taking our liberties away.
Amen to that. It's the age old divide and conquer strategy. Get the people focused on and fighting over irrelevancies while they turn the country into a police state.
Although this man did nothing wrong and should be protected under whistle blower shield laws he will be crucified for the simple crime of embarrassing Obama.
Manning committed treason and violated his oaths not because he's selfless
Given all the evidence presented to date Manning's actions don't rise anywhere near the level of treason. He did not aid and abet the enemy. He didn't give information to the enemy. Nor were his motivations at any time to help any enemy even the enemy in the charges against him. Whether Manning's actions were criminal is open to argument but they are NOT treason. He should not be on trial for his life simple because he embarrassed the government.
What is criminal and what he inadvertently exposed is the criminally negligent level of security for US government classified documents. That a low level operational intelligence analyst had access to that volume of information is criminal. That he was able access, download and walk out with that volume of classified information without anyone knowing is obscenely negligent. HIPAA/HITECH laws and PCI DSS apparently require a higher level of security then that used for US government classified information.
Also criminal is the treatment of Manning. He was held and tortured for 3 years before his trial started.
I would tend to agree that what Manning did probably rises to the level of being criminal rather than whistle blower. Whether you believe that or not imprisoning and torturing him for three years before submitting him to a secret trial before what really looks like kangaroo court far surpasses anything Manning did in the realm of criminal actions.
That's exactly what you do. Vote with your feet. Leaving a place is the best way to show them they have a problem.
Yeah, that work so well against the "Communist" states post WWII. Having to put up fences and minefields to keep the people in made them realize right away they had a problem.
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That is a question to ask NSA public affairs, not HR recruiters. If you expect that answer from them your expectations should probably be adjusted.
If you expect an answer from NSA public affairs you're either hopelessly naive or you're an idiot.
Sadly the reality of big organisations is that cutting the slack is needed from time to time and usually this does not happen without brutal surgeon that just cuts and cuts and cuts. If patient is relatively healthy and has some luck the lean company can actually be better than before.
That would be great if they actually cut the slack. From an MBA's perspective R&D and IT are slack. There are no black numbers to directly offset the red numbers therefore it is slack and can be cut. Now the bloated inefficient sales department, they have lots of black numbers so no cutting there. They get bonuses. Sales people continue to to oversell and lie about what can be delivered and then blame IT and R&D for not delivering what they told the sales people couldn't be delivered. Again from an MBA's perspective this is a problem in IT and R&D. The sales were there so the sales department did their job and got huge bonuses. But IT and R&D failed so we cut their salaries and lay them off.
That's how it works when the bean counters are in charge.
Objectivists are perfectly happy with the government spying on everyone.
I find it amazing the number of people who make statements declaring ideas like this represent Ayn Rand's philosophy when in reality it is exactly what she was railing against. Here is one quote that shows you are utterly clueless about what objectivism is supposed to represent. Ayn Rand:
Except Nixon only filed one Espionage Act charge against leaker(s)
Nixon also only monitored a small number of US citizens rather than everybody in the US.
Thats how a Democracy should function.
A Democracy cannot function were the "Democratic" government is wholesale monitoring the people it is supposed to be representing especially when that monitoring is kept secret from the governed.
A Democracy cannot function where the "Democratic" government keeps critical secrets from the governed. It's not possible to make informed decisions in voting when you're intentionally uninformed and misinformed.
A government "elected" based on propaganda and untruths is not a "Democratic" government. This is especially so where exposing the propaganda and untruths can only be done under threat of imprisonment, torture and even death.
One who exposes such actions and secrets is not betraying the Democracy. They are betraying an oppressive undemocratic government. Given the constitution they're suppose to be governing under in the US I dare say they are exposing an illegal government.
Probably -- but it would depend on the cost of allowing a terrorist plot to succeed.
That argument is assuming that Orwellian monitoring of all citizens is the only way to stop a terrorist plot. A strong argument could be made that a more focused operation would be more effective. It would almost certainly be more cost effective. That is of course if the Orwellian monitoring of all citizens was actually for the purpose of stopping terrorism. Although I guess it is if you class any form of dissent or challenge of the powers that be terrorism.
there simply aren't that many terrorist plots around to foil.
Doesn't this then obviate the need for Orwellian monitoring of it's citizens since their stated justification is such a low level threat?
I don't mean to defend the program, but what makes you so certain it does not (and cannot) detect terrorist plots?
Have you seen ANY evidence it does? If it was don't you think the government would be trotting out some credible cases (the ones mentioned so far have been pretty easily debunked) in defense of these programs? You're asking us to have faith that it actually does that in the absence of any supporting evidence. You have the guys caught with their hands in the cookie jar preaching to us about how many terrorist attacks this has prevented and how many lives have been saved yet they haven't produced a credible shred of evidence to support that as of yet.
who are they protecting with all of this data mining?
It's to monitor the enemy and stop them from nefarious activities. Who these enemies are is left as an exercise for the student. (Hint: Who are they monitoring?).
Verizon chooses not too. Obviously, they cannot think their customers do not value Netflix. Clearly, they don't care much about their customers -- or there's an alterior motive; or just plain ignorance, blindness, and stupidity.
No Verizon chooses not to because they can't charge $100 a month for cable video in a free market with actual competition. Thus they stop delivering other video service over the internet eliminating the competition.
No, it is not. The job of an ISP is to deliver traffic from their paying customers to other paying customers, or hand off the traffic to another ISP to deliver to their own customers. In this case, one ISP (Cogent) expects another ISP (Verizon) to absorb infrastructure costs because they failed to plan for external capacity requirements of their customers.
No. You're wrong. Verizon is getting paid by all their customers who are the ones requesting the Netflix traffic. By your logic Cogent should be getting paid by Verizon for delivering Netflix traffic to all those Verizon customers. This is the whole point of peering agreements.
The reason Verizon wants to throttle video traffic to their internet customers is because it's forcing competition in their market for cable video. Verizon can only charge $100 a month for cable video if there is no competition.
Essentially, Netflix pays Cogent as their "ISP". Cogent probably won that deal with their ridiculously low pricing. And now Cogent expects Verizon to invest in their network so that they can act as an extension of the Cogent network, through a "peering" agreement.
And there is a whole lot of individuals who pay Verizon for internet access including access to Netflix. That traffic is going over Verizon's network because Verizon customers who are paying Verizon for that network traffic are requesting it.
The part you seem to be missing here is that Netflix is eating into Verizon's ability to charge obscene rates of $100 a month just to watch movies. Cause, you see, it use to be paying customers had very limited options for accessing video therefore allowing cable TV companies to charge those obscene rates due to a lack of a competitive market. So now that Verizon is facing some competition for their cash cow video market they're going to dictate what they allow their customers to access on the internet to eliminate that competition.
So lets sum up. Verizon is getting paid for that bandwidth from the other direction. They want to restrict certain uses uses of that bandwidth to maintain their monopoly control over another market.
The Government is doing what we said they could (and in some cases insisted) do.
Yeah. I certainly voted for the allow the government violate the constitution and secretly interpret the law however they want and lie to congress about it provision. And of course the rest of my patriotic American comrades voted for too. It had that rider on it that allowed the executive branch to detain US citizens indefinitely without due process and even murder them if the president thought it was important. I check that part twice.
How do you vote against it?
Seems the guy has decided that he wants to fight this out in the court of public opinion.
Yeah, cause everyone knows the US government hasn't publish any information or press releases related to his prosecution. Add we won't mention how silent the MPAA/RIAA trolls have been about the whole thing.
Seriously, this guy is a criminal and should face the consequences of his actions.
No, he is not. But since you're such a rule of law guy I guess you would agree that the officials that lied to congress and illegally sped on US citizens should "face the consequences".
That's the spirit! Nothing will ever make a difference so let's do as we always have done. Do you see the pattern?
That's the spirit! Nothing will ever make a difference so let's do as we always have done. Do you see the pattern?
That's the spirit! Nothing will ever make a difference
Not at all what I'm advocating. Just advocating that voting for one or the other isn't helping either. I'm reminded of a scene form the movie 'Moon Over Parador'. 2 Guards are talking:
[Military Man 1] Who are you going to vote for?
[Military Man 2] I'm going to vote blue.
[Military Man 1] Vote for who you want. This is a free dictatorship.
Funny that most of the post WWII communist states claimed a 99% voter turnout in elections. "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice". I think the fact that less then half the eligible people vote makes a pretty strong statement. They recognize voting isn't going to make any difference. Voting for Obama's "Open Government" platform did a lot, didn't it? I'd argue that no one voting exposes fact that this isn't really a democratic state in a manner the government can't refute. At least not yet. Not until we've reached the "war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength " state.
so let's do as we always have done.
Seems to me voting for one of the clones running is doing exactly this.
Do you see the pattern?
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I recommend a history course, where you learn the interesting parts about governments picking out groups (external, or small internal e.g. Jews) and focus popular hatred on them, for the purpose of distracting people from their shitty lives, made and kept so by the government itself, used as an argument for reducing freedom rather than increasing it.
Don't really think I need a history course. I have 40 or 50 history books on my shelves and those are just the ones I own. Left vs. right in the US is a classic example of that strategy somewhat evolved to incorporate the military divide and conquer strategy. No need for an external enemy (yes, the Jews in Nazi Germany were an external enemy) to focus on. The enemy is those evil Nazi Republicans or those evil Socialist Democrats while in reality they are both wholly controlled by the same monetary interests. Of course this is speaking in vague generalities and the reality is far more complex.
It actually worked well. When Hungary met with Austria to lower the controls at the hungarian-austrian border, so many East Germans flet, that the remaining people in Germany lost all fear against their own government, and started large demonstrations whose first slogan were "we will stay!" - and this was meant as a threat, and it was understood as a threat, causing the unravelling of East Germany.
It actually worked well. When Hungary met with Austria to lower the controls at the hungarian-austrian border, so many East Germans flet, that the remaining people in Germany lost all fear against their own government, and started large demonstrations whose first slogan were "we will stay!" - and this was meant as a threat, and it was understood as a threat, causing the unravelling of East Germany.
I'm missing something here. What I get from that is the people that stayed are the ones that instigated change not the ones that left. And there was a whole lot of other stuff happening at that time also.
Dude thanks, what you've done requires real courage and people like you change the world for the better. You will probably be dragged through the mud. That inteligence aparatus which you helped build and outed is working right now very hard to get dirt on you, and will probably succeed. If there is no dirt to be gotten it will be manufactured.
R'amen to that. I just hope he is reading this and seeing he has at least some support. Given his geek cred I'm guessing he is.
I think coming out into the public was the smartest thing you could of done, i doubt you will be rendered because the damage is already done.
I agree with the first but think you're completely wrong in the second. Given the Obama administration's record on whistleblowers this man will be persecuted and prosecuted to the full extent capable of the most powerful government ever. I fear he will end a martyr. But the hope is this man and his will actions become a rallying cry for freedom.
They've learned (i hope) from the Manning case that locking you up into the loney bin and psychologically torturing you just make it worst.
Sadly I don't see that being the case. Even in a place with discourse above that of normal intelligence such as this it seems the majority think that Manning committed treason and thus the US government is justified in it's treatment of him.
Snowden was much smarter and it appears he learned from Manning's example. He was careful in what he released making sure to limit it exclusively to documents that showed illegal actions of the government without putting any individuals at risk. One would be very hard pressed to argue this is anything but a whistleblower exposing illegal actions by the government.
Illegal, Yes.
Not so much really.
Be careful, Mr. Snowden, they're going to be after you...
That's the truth. An administration that's willing to usurp the constitution will have no problem ignoring other laws.
I voted for Obama because he is the kind of person who takes action.
He took action alright. He's prosecuted more whistle blowers than every president before him combined and presided over and defended creating the most extensive domestic surveillance program in the history of governments. He has Nixon beat by a long shot and Nixon was impeached for what he did.
Presidents and executives are supposed to DO something, not preside over the nation like an administrator.
Not when that doing something is usurping the constitution and move further towards the police state. I'd rather have them do nothing.
Actually, failure to vote for third parties is the primary reason they're able to get away with stuff like this.
What third party? Do you really think that would make any difference? Under the current system anyone elected is controlled or made irrelevant. Until the money is removed from the electoral process this won't change.
you can bet they'd be picking up pieces of those platforms in order to continue out-competing third parties
One of Obama's primary platforms was "Open Government". That worked out well, didn't it? Kinda hard to make an informed decision when most of the important information is secret and anyone who exposes it is thrown in jail or worse (see Bradly Manning).
Please understand that the "left vs right" thing is just a distraction. Both parties are happily taking our liberties away.
Amen to that. It's the age old divide and conquer strategy. Get the people focused on and fighting over irrelevancies while they turn the country into a police state.
Although this man did nothing wrong and should be protected under whistle blower shield laws he will be crucified for the simple crime of embarrassing Obama.
Manning committed treason and violated his oaths not because he's selfless
Given all the evidence presented to date Manning's actions don't rise anywhere near the level of treason. He did not aid and abet the enemy. He didn't give information to the enemy. Nor were his motivations at any time to help any enemy even the enemy in the charges against him. Whether Manning's actions were criminal is open to argument but they are NOT treason. He should not be on trial for his life simple because he embarrassed the government.
What is criminal and what he inadvertently exposed is the criminally negligent level of security for US government classified documents. That a low level operational intelligence analyst had access to that volume of information is criminal. That he was able access, download and walk out with that volume of classified information without anyone knowing is obscenely negligent. HIPAA/HITECH laws and PCI DSS apparently require a higher level of security then that used for US government classified information.
Also criminal is the treatment of Manning. He was held and tortured for 3 years before his trial started.
I would tend to agree that what Manning did probably rises to the level of being criminal rather than whistle blower. Whether you believe that or not imprisoning and torturing him for three years before submitting him to a secret trial before what really looks like kangaroo court far surpasses anything Manning did in the realm of criminal actions.
That's exactly what you do. Vote with your feet. Leaving a place is the best way to show them they have a problem.
Yeah, that work so well against the "Communist" states post WWII. Having to put up fences and minefields to keep the people in made them realize right away they had a problem.