"I grew up on a farm. If there's one thing that pisses me off, it's people who walk around with their noses in the air. Yuppies, politicians, etc. are prone to this behavior."
Yes, because all of us farm boys know we are better than those big city slickers.;)
As a former member of the military stationed in both the Oki G6 and HQ MC I can understand and appreciate the importances of secrecy and multiple levels of classification.
At the same time, given the US war on drugs in Mexico sample above, I don't think it matters that much. Lets say the US has a system in place and they were focusing in one specific geographic area for smugglers. If the smugglers learned of this system, they would avoid it. If they did not learn of the system, the first few smugglers would be caught, and the rest would avoid it. In order for the system to work, it must constantly evolve. If on the other hand someone leaked the names of DEA informants, and those informants were killed it would reduce the system's knowledge of where to target and it would make it harder to turn more informants.
Same thing with this internet situation. Those people who use the internet to communicate and conspire in terrorist activities are likely doing so in secure methods (encryption, codes, intermediaries, etc...) Since they are already covering their tracks their knowledge that the system exists (which is really all that has been released) has virtually no impact on them. Maybe terrorists really are that sloppy, but it's more more likely that the system could be used to identify sympathysers than actually terrorists.
And oddly enough, the US Department of Defense as "the unlawful use of -- or threatened use of -- force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives."
Since 9/11 how many of our civil liberties have been revoked? How can we win a war against terror when we are attacking ourselves exactly where they want us to?
Wired didn't violate a gag order, someone from the litigation did. So likely the court will interview the reporter who cited the anon source and ask him who gave him the docs. If he refuses to speak he'll be held in contempt and thrown in jail (until the case is over likely). If he does cough up a name, that person will be put on trial for violating what ever specific laws are applied in a gag order (contempt?).
I think the point he was trying to make was that the PRESS should not be held liable. If you have a leak, prosecute the leak. Once the cat is out of the bag, it doesn't matter if the leak told the press, a blogger, or some concerned citizen, the secret is out.
And I'm all for appropriate responce. For example, a leak that blows the cover of an active under cover agent to me should be considered treason. A leak that reveals loose details about a government system (ie: War on drugs in Mexico, secret prisons in the the eastern block, internet snooping, etc) should not be considered as harshly. Blowing the cover of an agent can verily likely lead to the death of that agent and any intellegence they were bringing back. Blowing the cover on a system will not likely risk anyone's life, nor will it cause the system to stop working.
The story is the reqs. You couldn't be bothered to cut and paste the requirements? You had to just grab some crap paragraph that highlights the crappy info we've already known for months?
The problem here is not party lines, the problem here is that it is an election year and this is an easy way to look good to the public. The whole 'Look at me! I voted to keep your children safe from smut!' advertisment. They know darn well that the law will be overturned before it gets applied and that there is no real down side other than spending a couple hundred thousand tax dollars on litigation.
So true. The problem here is not the programming language, it is the architecture. If his team just haphazardly switches to Java they'll just blow 5 more years and wind up in the same boat. What they should do is review the app and the customer's needs, re-evaluate the architecture and sub system, and firm up the requirements and tech documentation. Then start from scratch in the language of choice (although I would recommend sticking with C++ since that is where his team's strengths are). Grab code as needed from the existing product, but the architecture is the single most critical aspect of large application development.
"...and hobbling the rapidly developing new technologies and business models"
So yeah, enforcing net-neutrality, or making ISPs common carriers would destroy the market for replacing all back bone routers with Cisco QoS capable routers. I fail to see how a profitable business opportunity for a hand full of companies out weighs the freedom and equality of service for all online service providers.
If the ISPs are NOT common carriers, can we sue them for transmitting child porn?
Is it? Katrina didn't destroy the homes of black people, it destroyed the homes of poor people. Whites, blacks, latinos, etc, the 9th Ward wasn't 100% black. We don't force black children to goto underfunded school, we force poor children to goto them.
The important question then becomes, why are there a disproportionate number of poor non-white people? And how do we help balance the scales?
I think one of the best options is school vouchers. There are good sides and bad sides to the voucher programs but if nothing else, it will give some students who wouldn't have had a decent shot at education a change.
I'm also concerned about the growing gap between the rich and the poor, and the shrinking middle class. The primary issue at hand here is the distribution of wealth, and so long as the rich keep getting more of it, the poor and middle class will keep getting less. Lower income leads to lower property values, which reduces property tax income, which drops education funding, which results in a lower level of education, which leads to low income jobs, and the cycle repeats itself.
We've had a few presidents give trickle down economics a try (Reagan x2, Bush Sr, Bush Jr x2) and we have seen the effect it has on the middle class, poor, and national debt vs per capita income. That was one thing Clinton did damn well, he really managed to get a handle on the national debt and worked on programs to improve the situation for poor/middle class citizens.
"A slightly higher majority would not be bothered if the NSA collected personal calls that they made."
Slightly higher? Hell, these people must have been stoned immaculate! I mean, did they feed the survey members hash brownies, then start grilling them on security questions?
Interviewer: Here, have another brownie. Stoner: Thanks man, these are some good brownies. Interviewer: Would it be okay if the NSA monitored your phone calls. Stoner: Yeah man sure, you got any chips man? Interviewer: Here, have another brownie.
My bust, you are correct. I had the two switched. Technically, I liked the 2nd game better, story wise, I liked the first game better. Both of them I felt had too little puzzling and flexibility.
There is an easy way to remove racism from a lot of these types of generalizations.
Rich people do next best beacuse their culture stresses education somewhat. Poor people do poorly because their cultures simply do not value education.
Just like the situation in New Orleans after Katrina hit. The cluster F! of a response down there had nothing to do with skin color and every thing to do with income level.
Scarey enough, that was going to be my next question. If you attempt to submit an article, and it gets edited, does your user account and IP go onto a government watch list?
"But, since they're not dumb either, they'll be gone by that time."
But then you can arrest all of the people they talked to, and see if you can get any of them to cough up information;) Not that they are terrorist or have commited any crime, but because they have talked to a person who had talked to a terrorist suspect. God bless the USA; the Athiests were right.
What ever happened to those games? The 'Quest for Glory' series was perfect, sure there was a bit of combat in it, but not much, it was much more puzzle and 'figure it out' based. Entertaining story lines, and so good humor. VTM:Redemption had a lot of potential, but still just wound up being 90% combat with a little bit of strategy involved, its predecessor, VTM:Bloodlines was also mostly combat, but had a better storyline IMO.
It depends. Like I said, if you compare a hick school from the south to a suburb school from the mid-west, there will be a huge discrepancy.
"Either you went to one of the top 1-2% schools or you are well above average as a student."
By GPA I was in the 51st percentile for my class. Lack of motivation was the primary reason for my low grades, but there were a lot of kids that were waaaaaaaaay smarter then I was. And while I consider my education top notch now, at the time my education was nothing different than any of the other small town schools in the same area. Oregon, Verona, Stoughton, and Evansville were all small towns (3k-10k populations) when I was growing up in the area (South Central Wisconsin), and all had (and continue to have) very similar education curriculum. We're not talking Arlington, VA here (rated top school district in the US last I heard), we're talking about small town public schools in Wisconsin. As a property owner I do get slammed for property taxes to pay for that education though ($2500/year on a $125k property), but to me, having a well educated youth population is definitely worth it.
And that is my point, my good public eduction would have aloud me to test out of all of my freshman year general studies requirements at a traditional college. I did take my math and sciences classes for a few reasons. First, it had been 5 years since I had used those skills, I would have been hard pressed to pass a test out. And Second, I had already maxed out my transfer and test out credits. My high school education and work experience aloud me to knock off 24 credits before I even started my freshman year, had I been fresh from high school and not limited by credits I would have knocked off at least another 9 to 12 credits. From the sounds of it, that is right on par with what a UK public school graduate with 5 A-Levels would be looking at in a US college.
And rightly so, you caught me. I was in a hurry and didn't hit my google bar's spell checker. I actually spelled especially incorrectly for years, and after being corrected I still occasionally hit the 'x' out of habit. Needless to say my spelling and grammar are some of my weakest abilities. But I assure you that my education (public schools) did everything they could to attempt to correct it. It was only my laziness and lack of motivation that left my abilities as crippled as they are. Believe it or not, the Google bar has actually been improving my spelling. The more I use it, the less common mistakes I make.
AS-Levels in the UK are roughly equivalent to AP courses in the US. If a student goes to college with 5 AP courses, those classes will either directly count for course credits, or the student will likely test out of the related classes. My AP English lit class from High school full filled my freshman level English class for my assoc degree. So yeah, if a US student with 5 AP courses under their belt did nothing to skip those classes that would repeat their education, they would have a very boring term. But in that case I would blame the student for not taking the initiative and working on getting into more advanced classes.
Slashdot Mirror
"I grew up on a farm. If there's one thing that pisses me off, it's people who walk around with their noses in the air. Yuppies, politicians, etc. are prone to this behavior."
;)
Yes, because all of us farm boys know we are better than those big city slickers.
-Rick
As a former member of the military stationed in both the Oki G6 and HQ MC I can understand and appreciate the importances of secrecy and multiple levels of classification.
At the same time, given the US war on drugs in Mexico sample above, I don't think it matters that much. Lets say the US has a system in place and they were focusing in one specific geographic area for smugglers. If the smugglers learned of this system, they would avoid it. If they did not learn of the system, the first few smugglers would be caught, and the rest would avoid it. In order for the system to work, it must constantly evolve. If on the other hand someone leaked the names of DEA informants, and those informants were killed it would reduce the system's knowledge of where to target and it would make it harder to turn more informants.
Same thing with this internet situation. Those people who use the internet to communicate and conspire in terrorist activities are likely doing so in secure methods (encryption, codes, intermediaries, etc...) Since they are already covering their tracks their knowledge that the system exists (which is really all that has been released) has virtually no impact on them. Maybe terrorists really are that sloppy, but it's more more likely that the system could be used to identify sympathysers than actually terrorists.
And oddly enough, the US Department of Defense as "the unlawful use of -- or threatened use of -- force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives."
Since 9/11 how many of our civil liberties have been revoked? How can we win a war against terror when we are attacking ourselves exactly where they want us to?
-Rick
Wired didn't violate a gag order, someone from the litigation did. So likely the court will interview the reporter who cited the anon source and ask him who gave him the docs. If he refuses to speak he'll be held in contempt and thrown in jail (until the case is over likely). If he does cough up a name, that person will be put on trial for violating what ever specific laws are applied in a gag order (contempt?).
-Rick
I think the point he was trying to make was that the PRESS should not be held liable. If you have a leak, prosecute the leak. Once the cat is out of the bag, it doesn't matter if the leak told the press, a blogger, or some concerned citizen, the secret is out.
And I'm all for appropriate responce. For example, a leak that blows the cover of an active under cover agent to me should be considered treason. A leak that reveals loose details about a government system (ie: War on drugs in Mexico, secret prisons in the the eastern block, internet snooping, etc) should not be considered as harshly. Blowing the cover of an agent can verily likely lead to the death of that agent and any intellegence they were bringing back. Blowing the cover on a system will not likely risk anyone's life, nor will it cause the system to stop working.
-Rick
-Rick
Just what are 'teh goggles' suposed to do?
-Rick
The story is the reqs. You couldn't be bothered to cut and paste the requirements? You had to just grab some crap paragraph that highlights the crappy info we've already known for months?
Weak. Just weak.
-Rick
The problem here is not party lines, the problem here is that it is an election year and this is an easy way to look good to the public. The whole 'Look at me! I voted to keep your children safe from smut!' advertisment. They know darn well that the law will be overturned before it gets applied and that there is no real down side other than spending a couple hundred thousand tax dollars on litigation.
-Rick
Then you lack the perspective of government.
No, I just lack the lobbyist lined wallet.
-Rick
So true. The problem here is not the programming language, it is the architecture. If his team just haphazardly switches to Java they'll just blow 5 more years and wind up in the same boat. What they should do is review the app and the customer's needs, re-evaluate the architecture and sub system, and firm up the requirements and tech documentation. Then start from scratch in the language of choice (although I would recommend sticking with C++ since that is where his team's strengths are). Grab code as needed from the existing product, but the architecture is the single most critical aspect of large application development.
-Rick
"...and hobbling the rapidly developing new technologies and business models"
So yeah, enforcing net-neutrality, or making ISPs common carriers would destroy the market for replacing all back bone routers with Cisco QoS capable routers. I fail to see how a profitable business opportunity for a hand full of companies out weighs the freedom and equality of service for all online service providers.
If the ISPs are NOT common carriers, can we sue them for transmitting child porn?
-Rick
Only issue is that you'll need to add another 1800 miles to that truck/tanker route. Last I heard Arizona didn't have the best corn growing climate ;)
-Rick
Agreed, my web host has an online text editor. So given the loosest reading of the text, their hosting system would have to be trimmed down.
-Rick
Is it? Katrina didn't destroy the homes of black people, it destroyed the homes of poor people. Whites, blacks, latinos, etc, the 9th Ward wasn't 100% black. We don't force black children to goto underfunded school, we force poor children to goto them.
The important question then becomes, why are there a disproportionate number of poor non-white people? And how do we help balance the scales?
I think one of the best options is school vouchers. There are good sides and bad sides to the voucher programs but if nothing else, it will give some students who wouldn't have had a decent shot at education a change.
I'm also concerned about the growing gap between the rich and the poor, and the shrinking middle class. The primary issue at hand here is the distribution of wealth, and so long as the rich keep getting more of it, the poor and middle class will keep getting less. Lower income leads to lower property values, which reduces property tax income, which drops education funding, which results in a lower level of education, which leads to low income jobs, and the cycle repeats itself.
We've had a few presidents give trickle down economics a try (Reagan x2, Bush Sr, Bush Jr x2) and we have seen the effect it has on the middle class, poor, and national debt vs per capita income. That was one thing Clinton did damn well, he really managed to get a handle on the national debt and worked on programs to improve the situation for poor/middle class citizens.
-Rick
"A slightly higher majority would not be bothered if the NSA collected personal calls that they made."
Slightly higher? Hell, these people must have been stoned immaculate! I mean, did they feed the survey members hash brownies, then start grilling them on security questions?
Interviewer: Here, have another brownie.
Stoner: Thanks man, these are some good brownies.
Interviewer: Would it be okay if the NSA monitored your phone calls.
Stoner: Yeah man sure, you got any chips man?
Interviewer: Here, have another brownie.
-Rick
My bust, you are correct. I had the two switched. Technically, I liked the 2nd game better, story wise, I liked the first game better. Both of them I felt had too little puzzling and flexibility.
-Rick
There is an easy way to remove racism from a lot of these types of generalizations.
Rich people do next best beacuse their culture stresses education somewhat. Poor people do poorly because their cultures simply do not value education.
Just like the situation in New Orleans after Katrina hit. The cluster F! of a response down there had nothing to do with skin color and every thing to do with income level.
-Rick
Scarey enough, that was going to be my next question. If you attempt to submit an article, and it gets edited, does your user account and IP go onto a government watch list?
-Rick
I caught some live playing footage of the game on G4's E3 coverage, it actually looked pretty nice, if it comes out on PC, I may check it out.
-Rick
"But, since they're not dumb either, they'll be gone by that time."
;) Not that they are terrorist or have commited any crime, but because they have talked to a person who had talked to a terrorist suspect. God bless the USA; the Athiests were right.
But then you can arrest all of the people they talked to, and see if you can get any of them to cough up information
-Rick
What ever happened to those games? The 'Quest for Glory' series was perfect, sure there was a bit of combat in it, but not much, it was much more puzzle and 'figure it out' based. Entertaining story lines, and so good humor. VTM:Redemption had a lot of potential, but still just wound up being 90% combat with a little bit of strategy involved, its predecessor, VTM:Bloodlines was also mostly combat, but had a better storyline IMO.
-Rick
Escape from Monkey Island is tops in my books.
-Rick
"That's atypical."
It depends. Like I said, if you compare a hick school from the south to a suburb school from the mid-west, there will be a huge discrepancy.
"Either you went to one of the top 1-2% schools or you are well above average as a student."
By GPA I was in the 51st percentile for my class. Lack of motivation was the primary reason for my low grades, but there were a lot of kids that were waaaaaaaaay smarter then I was. And while I consider my education top notch now, at the time my education was nothing different than any of the other small town schools in the same area. Oregon, Verona, Stoughton, and Evansville were all small towns (3k-10k populations) when I was growing up in the area (South Central Wisconsin), and all had (and continue to have) very similar education curriculum. We're not talking Arlington, VA here (rated top school district in the US last I heard), we're talking about small town public schools in Wisconsin. As a property owner I do get slammed for property taxes to pay for that education though ($2500/year on a $125k property), but to me, having a well educated youth population is definitely worth it.
-Rick
And that is my point, my good public eduction would have aloud me to test out of all of my freshman year general studies requirements at a traditional college. I did take my math and sciences classes for a few reasons. First, it had been 5 years since I had used those skills, I would have been hard pressed to pass a test out. And Second, I had already maxed out my transfer and test out credits. My high school education and work experience aloud me to knock off 24 credits before I even started my freshman year, had I been fresh from high school and not limited by credits I would have knocked off at least another 9 to 12 credits. From the sounds of it, that is right on par with what a UK public school graduate with 5 A-Levels would be looking at in a US college.
-Rick
And rightly so, you caught me. I was in a hurry and didn't hit my google bar's spell checker. I actually spelled especially incorrectly for years, and after being corrected I still occasionally hit the 'x' out of habit. Needless to say my spelling and grammar are some of my weakest abilities. But I assure you that my education (public schools) did everything they could to attempt to correct it. It was only my laziness and lack of motivation that left my abilities as crippled as they are. Believe it or not, the Google bar has actually been improving my spelling. The more I use it, the less common mistakes I make.
-Rick
AS-Levels in the UK are roughly equivalent to AP courses in the US. If a student goes to college with 5 AP courses, those classes will either directly count for course credits, or the student will likely test out of the related classes. My AP English lit class from High school full filled my freshman level English class for my assoc degree. So yeah, if a US student with 5 AP courses under their belt did nothing to skip those classes that would repeat their education, they would have a very boring term. But in that case I would blame the student for not taking the initiative and working on getting into more advanced classes.
-Rick