But the problems were not the FBI's alone. Because of an open-ended contract with few safeguards, SAIC reaped more than $100 million as the project became bigger and more complicated, even though its software never worked properly. The company continued to meet the bureau's requests, accepting payments despite clear signs that the FBI's approach to the project was badly flawed, according to people who were involved in the project or later reviewed it for the government.
And that is how you get rich doing work for the government. The government agency comes up with a half-assed plan, you put in a low bid, they accept and start handing you checks, and you make things look pretty, all the while hiding the flaws. In then end, you've become rich, the goverment runs a deficit, and the American taxpayer foots the bill.
We'll see. But I think a lot of you here are proving the point of the original article in this thread - you're jumping to conclusions about guilt when right now, there is more saying this guy is innocent than otherwise.
The problem is -- his confession challenges his innocence. In essence, he's saying "I did it" and expecting everyone to agree. For the prosecutors and the police, the hard part becomes turning their way of thinking around and going "how can we prove this guy isn't guilty?" Guilt or innocence defined by law sometimes has little to do with guilt or innocence in fact or deed.
This is just a stop on the way to the supreme court.
Exactly. Circuit courts are just the testing grounds; the Supreme Court will be the proving grounds. However, given the shift in the Court of late, I'm not sure how this one will fall. Should be an open and shut case -- no warrant, no wiretap. But the SC always has to look at the spirit of things, not just the letter, and there might be enough Justices who see this as a necessary evil to make it a close vote.
And his ex-wife might be trying to gain a little temporary publicity for herself. Or maybe he made a trip she didn't know about. Also, she's an ex-wife, meaning her motives may be suspect. Look, it comes down to this: he's confessed. Now, the Boulder PD has to go over his confession, match it to what they know of the crime, and decide if he's a good fit for the evidence, or if he knows something only the killer may have known. Guilty or not, he's set himself up to be the murderer and now it will require solid evidence to contradict him.
Normally I would say "yes," but if you've seen the videom the guy confessed. Now I don't know about you (and IANAL), but when you confess to a crime, doesn't that usually count as an admission of guilt?
The U.S. citizen has lost all notion of public shame.
On the contrary, we've inverted public shame, turning "innocent until proven guilty" into "trial by public opinion." We're usually shaming the wrong people. Take this break in the JonBenet Ramsey case -- turns out it wasn't the parents, but some nut-job ex-teacher. But back 10 years ago, they were hounded by the media and public opinion was decidedly against them. True, they didn't make themselves look good, but the fact is people were browbeating them, hoping they'd confess.
The fact is, we have a "pile on" mentality here in the US. Once something is out in the open and there's even one piece of information that can be flogged (or blogged) to death, people jump on the bandwagon without using any critical reasoning skills. So yes, this could happen here, but to the wrong people, for the wrong reasons.
Not to drag this into Net Neutrality territory, but there's every possibility they might have to, to pay to keep themselves at the forefront with the telcos, at least untill their own fibre is in place.
Nice thing for Google, is that although they are the new player on the block (vs. yahoo, aol, MS, etc), they have a superior reputation to all the other players. They just have to capitalize on that (i.e. no crap products that take their name down).
The thing that bothers me about Google is: is it too much of a good thing? Put aside quality for a moment; is it possible Google's continuing expansion will spread it too thin? Mind you, Amazon has been expanding for what seems like eons now, but their main site is starting to get cluttered and I think they've been overstepping their reach with some of the areas they've gotten into (Groceries?). I'd be afraid of Google diluting itself too much in an attempt to become universally ubiquitous.
And that's generally true of any product that attempts to enter an already established market. You make an initial splash but then it takes a while to build a base beyond the initial rush. Word of mouth eventually takes over and assuming a product is useful or even desireable, eventually its acceptance rate increases (look at Firefox's steady growth).
Greenbaum said her husband and father intend to challenge AOL's plans to dig on the family's property and search the family's 3,000-square-foot home. She said AOL's lawyer notified the family that the company intends to use bulldozers and geological teams to hunt for gold and platinum on their property.
AOL said it will try to accommodate Hawke's parents by not being too obtrusive.
As if bulldozers weren't obtrusive when they're tearing up your yard?
Is it possible for AOL to do anything even more stupid? Are they trying to set a record for stuipd things in a month? Never have the mighty fallen so far.
I know that I often can't recall websites I've been to once but want to revisit. I will, however, often remember the search terms that got me there -- sometimes very specific search terms, since I've narrowed it down from my first wide-net search.
The thing thatgets me is when I find something via search, only to forget to bookmark it, then forget exactly what combination got me there. I've noted Google has a way of looking at your past searches (beta, of course) and that's helpful, although scary to think people will take that information out of context and read you as something you're not.
Ok, a lot of this AOL search data is quite amusing, in a sad, pathetic way. Too many people are having their jollies over it, while secretly being scared someone's going to get a peek at their searching record when Google finally loses its mind and makes the data available. It's easy to laugh, and be downright frightened, but in the end, we type our searches in, click the button and don't give it another thought. People wish to judge (myself included); it was a survival instinct in a far distant past and now it manifests itself as a morbid curiosity with the lives of other people.
People come in all colors, size, and mental states, AOL users undoubtedly more so. SO in their you'll find your fair share of freaks or freak wannabes, but mostly you'll just find people trying to find out things. What makes them freakish is not what they type in, but what they do with the information.
In any case, why do so many people equate "not perfect" with "utterly worthless"? If you're waiting for a perfect system, it's never going to happen.
It has nothing to do with perfection. It has to do with the fact that is some panacea the government had devised to make the public think they are going to be safer, when in fact it won't do anything other than get easily flustered people pulled out of line and harassed while unperturbed folks and the routine flyers will simply glide on through.
And don't kid yourself; the terrorists are not guys they're pulling off the street, strapping bombs to, and trying to plant on planes. The 9/11 bunch practiced, rehearsed, and studied the whole system, so they new when and where and how to defeat security. I doubt they would have betrayed much as they passed through this system, because for them it had become routine. That's the easiest way to defeat the lie detector and its ilk -- make something so utterly common, so normal, say an untruth so many times that you begin to believe it, that under no circumstances do you give it a second thought.
...the idea is utterly worthless, since if you're a polished and practiced enough liar, your bodily functions are not going to change significantly, because you believe every word you're speaking. And plenty of people are going to be nervous at the types of questions, the thought that they might be lying when asked if they've used drugs or something similar when they remember the pot they smoked in college, and generally be ramped up anyway from waiting around to pass through security. It's the same process that causes your blood pressure to be higher in the doctor's office than it is when you take it at home.
Would you rather be "googled" or "yahooed?" Somebody saying "I yahooed you" makes it sound like they zapped you with a yodelling ray. Suddenly you feel the need to climb mountains and wear Lederhosen.
Xerox (see "The Xerox Trademark" at the bottom of the page) has been getting bent out of shape for years over the thought of people "xeroxing" things; why should Google be any different?
Muris does raise a good point that should be taken into consideration:
Instead of starting a registry, Muris said, the FTC would first push the private sector to agree on a method for electronically authenticating senders of e-mail, which would cut down on spammers' ability to hide their identities and locations. Muris said such authentication is a necessary precursor to any no-spam registry.
I'm not sure how feasible that idea is, however. I would recommend just hitting the company that owns the last server to forward the e-mail. If they can't provide/prove another source from which the e-mail came, hit them with the $10,000 fine. I would wager that companies would be awful quick to clamp down their SMTP servers and keep records of where everything came from. Not only would this increase a company's security but it would reduce much of the spam you see that has a legitimate address from a careless company.
Feasibility isn't really the issue, because undoubtedly some system can be developed for digitally signing email that could be easily authenticated. The problem comes in a) getting everyone to agree to the standard, b) implementing the standard, and c) getting everyone to use the standard. It really wouldn't do to have competing methods, and all the problems that then come with interoperability. And let's not forget, it has to be difficult to forge; if not, it's a waste of time.
In deciding whether or not to grant defendant Deborah Foster's Motion For Attorneys Fees, the court should consider the broader context of the RIAA lawsuit campaign--especially the positive effect that a fee award would have on encouraging the RIAA to be more diligent in conducting its pre-suit investigations, more prompt in dismissing suits when a defendant asserts substantial claims of innocence or mistaken identity, and more responsible in asserting its legal theories. Moreover, a fee award would encourage innocent accused infringers to stand up and fight back against bogus RIAA claims, deter the RIAA from continuing to prosecute meritless suits that harass defendants it knows or reasonably should know are innocent, and further the purposes of the Copyright Act by reaffirming the appropriate limits of a copyright owner's exclusive rights.
And inevitably, that would be the fatsest way to deal the **AA a blow -- if everyone sued wrongfuly joind together in a class action civil suit and sued them for an outrageous amount of money. They wouldn't get the outrageous amount of money, but the trouble with this whole process has been that there's really no mainstream publicity of the matter. A class action suit might change that. Of course if you really wanted to stick it to the **AA, sic NY Atty General Spitzer on them.
His opposition to manned spaceflight and the lunar missions in particular. He was sure that if men traversed the Van Allen Belts, they would become poisoned by radioactivity and die. If he and Jerome Wiesner had their way, there would have been no manned space program, only robot probes.
No, actually, I (and most of the astronomers in my peer group) do NOT enjoy the ongoing saga. We would like the whole matter to go away.
But it won't until the member body of the IAU stands up and says "Enough!" This whole controversy required exactly one meeting, where everyone could debate the issue, and then a consensus could be formed and a standard applied. But this has dragged on and on and on. Heck, this was a problem even before the influx of larger KBO's into the public consciousness. Astronomers were debating Pluto's status back in the early 90's.
No, the scientific community is in a constant state of polarization, between the old guard, wary of new things and ideas, and the new breed, mainly young researchers thinking outside the box. This debate is just symptomatic of a larger problem that's plagued scientific debate for a long time.
Why not fix the "official" number of planets at nine, including the largest, nearest, and most well-known of the Kuyper Belt Objects, and leave it at that?
Because there's nothing the scientific community loves more than controversy, and this is beginning to rival the great Newton vs. Einstein debate, where some purists were not convinced that Einstein's theories were realistic. Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto back in 1930 after a systematic search for planets beyond Neptune. He had to pore through photographic plates, trying to find the tiniest relative shift of an object in the starfield that would lead him to a body that was orbiting the Sun. That he found Pluto was remarkable for the time, and I think all this debate over Pluto's status is a disservice to him. Let sleeping dogs lie, let Pluto remain one of the original nine planets, and let's move on.
News for Nerds, Stuff that matters, and Steven Colbert news.
And why would Slashdot become a news depot for him? I don't even think he's that funny. The whole "Daily Show" type faux news show is overdone. I'd rather listen to a Leno/Letterman monologue for my political laughs. Let's not give this guy any more publicity than he deserves, which is IMO, none.
Slashdot Mirror
And that is how you get rich doing work for the government. The government agency comes up with a half-assed plan, you put in a low bid, they accept and start handing you checks, and you make things look pretty, all the while hiding the flaws. In then end, you've become rich, the goverment runs a deficit, and the American taxpayer foots the bill.
We'll see. But I think a lot of you here are proving the point of the original article in this thread - you're jumping to conclusions about guilt when right now, there is more saying this guy is innocent than otherwise.
The problem is -- his confession challenges his innocence. In essence, he's saying "I did it" and expecting everyone to agree. For the prosecutors and the police, the hard part becomes turning their way of thinking around and going "how can we prove this guy isn't guilty?" Guilt or innocence defined by law sometimes has little to do with guilt or innocence in fact or deed.
This is just a stop on the way to the supreme court.
Exactly. Circuit courts are just the testing grounds; the Supreme Court will be the proving grounds. However, given the shift in the Court of late, I'm not sure how this one will fall. Should be an open and shut case -- no warrant, no wiretap. But the SC always has to look at the spirit of things, not just the letter, and there might be enough Justices who see this as a necessary evil to make it a close vote.
And his ex-wife might be trying to gain a little temporary publicity for herself. Or maybe he made a trip she didn't know about. Also, she's an ex-wife, meaning her motives may be suspect. Look, it comes down to this: he's confessed. Now, the Boulder PD has to go over his confession, match it to what they know of the crime, and decide if he's a good fit for the evidence, or if he knows something only the killer may have known. Guilty or not, he's set himself up to be the murderer and now it will require solid evidence to contradict him.
Normally I would say "yes," but if you've seen the videom the guy confessed. Now I don't know about you (and IANAL), but when you confess to a crime, doesn't that usually count as an admission of guilt?
The U.S. citizen has lost all notion of public shame.
On the contrary, we've inverted public shame, turning "innocent until proven guilty" into "trial by public opinion." We're usually shaming the wrong people. Take this break in the JonBenet Ramsey case -- turns out it wasn't the parents, but some nut-job ex-teacher. But back 10 years ago, they were hounded by the media and public opinion was decidedly against them. True, they didn't make themselves look good, but the fact is people were browbeating them, hoping they'd confess.
The fact is, we have a "pile on" mentality here in the US. Once something is out in the open and there's even one piece of information that can be flogged (or blogged) to death, people jump on the bandwagon without using any critical reasoning skills. So yes, this could happen here, but to the wrong people, for the wrong reasons.
Not to drag this into Net Neutrality territory, but there's every possibility they might have to, to pay to keep themselves at the forefront with the telcos, at least untill their own fibre is in place.
The thing that bothers me about Google is: is it too much of a good thing? Put aside quality for a moment; is it possible Google's continuing expansion will spread it too thin? Mind you, Amazon has been expanding for what seems like eons now, but their main site is starting to get cluttered and I think they've been overstepping their reach with some of the areas they've gotten into (Groceries?). I'd be afraid of Google diluting itself too much in an attempt to become universally ubiquitous.
And that's generally true of any product that attempts to enter an already established market. You make an initial splash but then it takes a while to build a base beyond the initial rush. Word of mouth eventually takes over and assuming a product is useful or even desireable, eventually its acceptance rate increases (look at Firefox's steady growth).
As if bulldozers weren't obtrusive when they're tearing up your yard?
Is it possible for AOL to do anything even more stupid? Are they trying to set a record for stuipd things in a month? Never have the mighty fallen so far.
We like to refer to it as "matter of color."
The thing thatgets me is when I find something via search, only to forget to bookmark it, then forget exactly what combination got me there. I've noted Google has a way of looking at your past searches (beta, of course) and that's helpful, although scary to think people will take that information out of context and read you as something you're not.
Ok, a lot of this AOL search data is quite amusing, in a sad, pathetic way. Too many people are having their jollies over it, while secretly being scared someone's going to get a peek at their searching record when Google finally loses its mind and makes the data available. It's easy to laugh, and be downright frightened, but in the end, we type our searches in, click the button and don't give it another thought. People wish to judge (myself included); it was a survival instinct in a far distant past and now it manifests itself as a morbid curiosity with the lives of other people.
People come in all colors, size, and mental states, AOL users undoubtedly more so. SO in their you'll find your fair share of freaks or freak wannabes, but mostly you'll just find people trying to find out things. What makes them freakish is not what they type in, but what they do with the information.
Worse: will David Hasselhoff now be labelled a terrorist every time he flies?
In any case, why do so many people equate "not perfect" with "utterly worthless"? If you're waiting for a perfect system, it's never going to happen.
It has nothing to do with perfection. It has to do with the fact that is some panacea the government had devised to make the public think they are going to be safer, when in fact it won't do anything other than get easily flustered people pulled out of line and harassed while unperturbed folks and the routine flyers will simply glide on through.
And don't kid yourself; the terrorists are not guys they're pulling off the street, strapping bombs to, and trying to plant on planes. The 9/11 bunch practiced, rehearsed, and studied the whole system, so they new when and where and how to defeat security. I doubt they would have betrayed much as they passed through this system, because for them it had become routine. That's the easiest way to defeat the lie detector and its ilk -- make something so utterly common, so normal, say an untruth so many times that you begin to believe it, that under no circumstances do you give it a second thought.
...the idea is utterly worthless, since if you're a polished and practiced enough liar, your bodily functions are not going to change significantly, because you believe every word you're speaking. And plenty of people are going to be nervous at the types of questions, the thought that they might be lying when asked if they've used drugs or something similar when they remember the pot they smoked in college, and generally be ramped up anyway from waiting around to pass through security. It's the same process that causes your blood pressure to be higher in the doctor's office than it is when you take it at home.
Would you rather be "googled" or "yahooed?" Somebody saying "I yahooed you" makes it sound like they zapped you with a yodelling ray. Suddenly you feel the need to climb mountains and wear Lederhosen.
Xerox (see "The Xerox Trademark" at the bottom of the page) has been getting bent out of shape for years over the thought of people "xeroxing" things; why should Google be any different?
Feasibility isn't really the issue, because undoubtedly some system can be developed for digitally signing email that could be easily authenticated. The problem comes in a) getting everyone to agree to the standard, b) implementing the standard, and c) getting everyone to use the standard. It really wouldn't do to have competing methods, and all the problems that then come with interoperability. And let's not forget, it has to be difficult to forge; if not, it's a waste of time.
Well, it's better than calling it "digital penetration".
Yes, that involves something entirely different... wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more!
From the motion:
And inevitably, that would be the fatsest way to deal the **AA a blow -- if everyone sued wrongfuly joind together in a class action civil suit and sued them for an outrageous amount of money. They wouldn't get the outrageous amount of money, but the trouble with this whole process has been that there's really no mainstream publicity of the matter. A class action suit might change that. Of course if you really wanted to stick it to the **AA, sic NY Atty General Spitzer on them.
No, actually, I (and most of the astronomers in my peer group) do NOT enjoy the ongoing saga. We would like the whole matter to go away.
But it won't until the member body of the IAU stands up and says "Enough!" This whole controversy required exactly one meeting, where everyone could debate the issue, and then a consensus could be formed and a standard applied. But this has dragged on and on and on. Heck, this was a problem even before the influx of larger KBO's into the public consciousness. Astronomers were debating Pluto's status back in the early 90's.
No, the scientific community is in a constant state of polarization, between the old guard, wary of new things and ideas, and the new breed, mainly young researchers thinking outside the box. This debate is just symptomatic of a larger problem that's plagued scientific debate for a long time.
Because there's nothing the scientific community loves more than controversy, and this is beginning to rival the great Newton vs. Einstein debate, where some purists were not convinced that Einstein's theories were realistic. Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto back in 1930 after a systematic search for planets beyond Neptune. He had to pore through photographic plates, trying to find the tiniest relative shift of an object in the starfield that would lead him to a body that was orbiting the Sun. That he found Pluto was remarkable for the time, and I think all this debate over Pluto's status is a disservice to him. Let sleeping dogs lie, let Pluto remain one of the original nine planets, and let's move on.
News for Nerds, Stuff that matters, and Steven Colbert news.
And why would Slashdot become a news depot for him? I don't even think he's that funny. The whole "Daily Show" type faux news show is overdone. I'd rather listen to a Leno/Letterman monologue for my political laughs. Let's not give this guy any more publicity than he deserves, which is IMO, none.