Most background information is not self-volunteered, it is gathered by FBI agents, etc., at their own discretion.
Worse, this is all gathered to identify risks, especially those such as potential blackmail and extortion opportunities.
Some of these forms will be for employees (or prospective employees) that were denied clearances, because they were at risk. Now the risk is significantly increased, clearance or not.
ps - there are two good reasons to deny clearance to a transgendered individual:
0. Any ambiguity about their identity is a question to completely answer. For what I hope are obvious reasons. Background investigations should show continuity of identity at a minimum .
1. A transgendered individual may indeed have two lives, 'before' and 'after'. Which will they assume after a clearance is granted? An ambiguity that might disqualify someone from at least the highest clearances...
The agencies and branches most demanding of security clearances need no excuses such as bigotry or discrimination to deny clearances to anyone. They can be sufficiently paranoid for a host of other reasons. It may comfort some to accuse them of improper behavior, but it need not be the real reason.. And it's not uncommon to let requests simply lay on the table, unresolved. In some cases, denials might even compromise an agency.
Doubtful. The OPM has been negligent in this area for decades. And they are not the only agency.
A bottom - to - top review and security renovation is critically needed, and should cost closer to $100Bn than not if it's done right. Everything, from.mil and DOD to mainline agencies and even.gov customer service sites, everything.
And not a review. A complete reimagining and reinstallation.
Not going to happen in this Administration, as they fear any analysis.
The fiasco of our former Secretary of State running a private server at their own residence for official email is a example of the utter and total lack of actual information security in our government, a situation that (or should be) intolerable.
No one will be assisting agencies at major disaster sites. No other military has the shear scope of the US military. Or the willingness.
No reason to fear Putin would do something stupid, anywhere.
Nor Iran, Syria, etc.
If China wants to control the South China Sea, fine. If that rule extends from Australia to Japan to Hawaii, not a problem.
We certainly don't need to threaten any of a half-dozen groups with retaliation if, just if, they decide to act on their threats and kill Americans wherever they can find them, in any number they can.
0. MAD works when you know who detonated the first weapon. We may not know this.
1. MAD also presumes rational enemies, with motivation sufficiently equal to ours, to make their decisions more or less rational. We no longer live in that world. Many of our enemies do not have the same rationale for using nuclear weapons as we and other like nations do.
2. Even if we know who detonated a weapon, of they are stateless, we have limited retaliation opportunities. If any.
Noting that the housing bubble circa 2005-2009 left many with those 'hard assets' so devalued that they did not cover the list balance, sometimes dramatically. In those cases, the lender takes a bath, just like a student lender essentially had no collateral at all.
So the government underwrites loans without collateral. Nice deal for all the other players...
The housing bubble that started in 2005 resulted in my purchasing a rental property precisely at the height of the market. I had to, it was part of a deal. So when the bubble burst, the market value went to about 40% of loan balance in 2008, and stayed there until 2012.
I didn't 'walk away'. I endured countless calls from the lender's 'home retention team', or 'home affordability team', or whoever if they, THEY, processed my payment either on due date or mere hours later. They were deathly afraid I would do the rational thing and walk away.
But the property had positive cash from from day one. It made business sense for me to keep it. As of this year, it has equity value. Not much, but that's pretty good.
As an aside, I could have bought the neighboring property for $50k in 2011, which at that time was really fair market value. Same layout, a mirror image, but it needed a new roof, major remodels inside, and had no tenants. It looked like 30% down (commercial loan for income property), $30k of work, about $45K cash to buy and rent out a $50k property. Not very attractive.
But back to the story, I rented to one man who bought a home in early 2005, escaped most of the bubble here, but had a 3-year ARM that drove his payment from $1,500/mo to $3,800/mo. He walked way when it adjusted. No bank could fix this in 2008, for obvious reasons, and he also was working in commercial construction, which dried up. His income plummeted, and he eventually could not even pay rent.
'Lots' of people I know walked way from mortgages that far exceeded property value. It was a business decision, prompted by both buying at inflated prices, the subsequent collapse of the market, many had ARMs that went sky-high, combined with post-2008 layoffs, credit card debt that forced them into bankruptcy, and in many cases their being given a loan for over-priced homes appraised by unscrupulous appraisers in collusion with mortgage bankers and realtors. Yes, Realtors.
For a graduate who chose a major with no job prospects, and no ability to find alternative work that can pay the bills, default may make sense. If these defaults impact certain institutions more than others, perhaps we will see market pricing for either student loans or for programs. Let me explain:
If defaults occur for certain institutions, a market pricing approach would raise interest rates for those schools that suffer more defaults. This is bound to impact enrollment for some of these.
However, if defaults impact certain majors (philosophy and art being favorite examples), perhaps then lenders inquire about the student's course of study, and price it according to experience.
There are several possible outcomes to these actions:
- Some institutions may lower tuition. Unlikely at first, but if enrollment suffers because students can't finance their tuition, they may adjust. - Some majors may become so unpopular that tuition has to drop. Maybe. - Lenders may be asking more questions of students - job prospects, ability to pay, blah blah. - The government may, just may, get out of the business
Consider this. In 2005, mortgage lenders started making loans that were literally indefensible. NINJA loans, Sallie May and Freddie Mac underwriting loans with dubious or nonexistent documentation, inflated values, collusion that is obvious in hindsight. Easy money that resulted in defaults when the real estate market corrected, and the economic downturn forced borrowers to make hard choices. Many 'walked way'. Now, five years later for the last of those, they find that they can in fact get a loan - the banks figured this out. Tighter requirements now for sure, but more like normal for the long-term market.
Now we have the federal government underwriting student loans for tuition that is increasing much faster than the CPI, with less value than ever, and borrowers have limited prospects for repaying these loans. Schools claim they offer value, but even seemingly good bets like MBAs and engin
The windows on EVs will not be significantly different from those on IC vehicles for some time. There is no need nor advantage to change them. In fact, systesm such as suspension, steering, passenger restraint, etc will not have to change much.
OTOH, we are still seeing '65 Mustangs being restored. How many 2015 Mustangs, with ECUs, center console LCDs, etc. will be restored when the electronics are beyond obsolete? There are some great cars from the 70s-80s that have serious electronic issues, some where OEM parts are no longer available.
EVs will have these problems also - imagine sourcing motor controllers 50 years from now.
I retain just enough to advise my customers using our APIs on how to log the data, fix some permissions, and point out the error is their hosed-up SSL install, and to go to StackOverflow and try not to be too annoying lest they be ridiculed and get no real help at all. No, I do not install packages for my customers, I do not wish to be their OS support.
Some beg me to fix their code. Ha. But I do point out when they are misspelled some directive or other, despite having good working sample code available to them. Credit card processing seeks a black art to them.
My own purposes have become minimal, but I am working on understanding some ISP control panels and VM architecture so I can manage things when the situation is desperate. I don't feel the need to run Linux for my desktop.
I use a Linux VM for editing audio and prepping it for distribution or use by students. It doesn't take much, bu I'm rarely required to provide much more than 128K MP3s, which are to me much like fingernails on chalkboards. My own libraries are 320k, and I'm resampling my CDs to Ogg Vorbis and WAV/WMV to let me do better. My Google libraries are, of course, 128K. I also think ATRAC is unfairly maligned, but don't fight that fight much.
I'm not a professional, but I know a few who use Linux as an environment for specialized audio work, usually finalizing masters for distribution or CDs, the few who bother to burn those now. For general audio, low latency drivers are had to maintain, but ask anyone who's used Windows and they may have stories of good workstations gone bad, requiring a reformat/reimage. Windows happens. Few admit that their OS X stations sometimes go all to hell, but while rarer, it happens. Mostly OS X upgrades cause audio workstations to go all to crap.
Painting Linux with such a broad brush is often unwarranted, but in audio it's somewhat more defensible. But not like you seem to think.
How true. My work has authorized Chrome, and I'm testing the 12 or so distinct internal sites to see how terrible they function with it. Most internal sites work best with IE8, but IE9 is usable, and IE10 manageable. Our most secure site no longer functions correctly with IE for internal users, but Firefox is an excellent option, and Chrome is functional. I have not reinstalled Firefox since my last upgrade.
But, our users for the site I primarily support use IE8,9,10, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. Safari is challenged, and we cannot officially support it. Firefox and Chrome are fine. IE8 now gives us trouble, since current releases have change so much that the site has gone from requiring IE8 Compatibility Mode to now requiring it be disabled. Fun times.
But, we have a few internal sites that require Java, mostly for image delivery and management, and for some specialized mainframe apps. Where it is used, it's a good solution.
Myself, I use Chrome almost exclusively for personal and website work. Chrome Dev for Android is working very well, and on both phone and tablet is my default browser. My wife is still stuck in IE, she's hard to change.
I've used Incognito mode a lot more lately, especially for sensitive research. It's amusing to look once at shipping containers for storage, figure out it's not worth it, and then suffer the ads for them for months - it's a hugely profitable business, and competitive from the looks of it. Or research headphones, decide to stick with what you've got, and be bombarded with headphone ads. Poor marketers, they try so hard...
Not complaining, I know Adblock etc would end this.
Sadly, this is more of the 'management are idiots' theory
Sometimes correct, usually not, but comforting to the minions when they cannot find another explanation.
I'm entirely tired of this. Incompetence in virtually every market is, in fact, punished with failure. It may be even more discouraging to believe your management of intentional and deliberate, and competent, when they screw you, but to cling to the myth of incompetence is beneath thinking individuals. Not that corporate management cannot, sometimes, be incompetent, but the universal accusation is likely neither accurate nor helpful.
Actually, you should rather not explain every withdrawal that's *close to* $10k. And *close to* is defined by the investigative agency that has decided to take an interest in you or your activities.
And your bank will happily rat you out. They get brownie points for doing so, which both distracts the regulators from real problems, and gives them cred when they beg forgiveness for transgressions.
Slashdot Mirror
And youmissed my point.
The entire security process of our federal government needs to be changed, replaced, re-imagined, bottom to top, alkyl agencies, entirely.
Are you still thinking this most recent example is just a problem? Or is it a symptom?
Big picture. Big problem. Solve it all or don't bother.
Did I write that I thought it was ok?
The word I used was 'reimagining'.
As in 're imagining'.
Please read my posts. Skimming them yields unpredictable results.
Most background information is not self-volunteered, it is gathered by FBI agents, etc., at their own discretion.
Worse, this is all gathered to identify risks, especially those such as potential blackmail and extortion opportunities.
Some of these forms will be for employees (or prospective employees) that were denied clearances, because they were at risk. Now the risk is significantly increased, clearance or not.
ps - there are two good reasons to deny clearance to a transgendered individual:
0. Any ambiguity about their identity is a question to completely answer. For what I hope are obvious reasons. Background investigations should show continuity of identity at a minimum .
1. A transgendered individual may indeed have two lives, 'before' and 'after'. Which will they assume after a clearance is granted? An ambiguity that might disqualify someone from at least the highest clearances...
The agencies and branches most demanding of security clearances need no excuses such as bigotry or discrimination to deny clearances to anyone. They can be sufficiently paranoid for a host of other reasons. It may comfort some to accuse them of improper behavior, but it need not be the real reason.. And it's not uncommon to let requests simply lay on the table, unresolved. In some cases, denials might even compromise an agency.
Doubtful. The OPM has been negligent in this area for decades. And they are not the only agency.
A bottom - to - top review and security renovation is critically needed, and should cost closer to $100Bn than not if it's done right. Everything, from .mil and DOD to mainline agencies and even .gov customer service sites, everything.
And not a review. A complete reimagining and reinstallation.
Not going to happen in this Administration, as they fear any analysis.
The fiasco of our former Secretary of State running a private server at their own residence for official email is a example of the utter and total lack of actual information security in our government, a situation that (or should be) intolerable.
But, politics.
Are you claiming that the US is the primary cause of violence and unrest in the world?
B.S. We are not alone, and not the worst by a significant margin. Nope.
We are not innocent, but we are not, despite our enemies' accusations, worst.
Fraking do it.
No one will be assisting agencies at major disaster sites. No other military has the shear scope of the US military. Or the willingness.
No reason to fear Putin would do something stupid, anywhere.
Nor Iran, Syria, etc.
If China wants to control the South China Sea, fine. If that rule extends from Australia to Japan to Hawaii, not a problem.
We certainly don't need to threaten any of a half-dozen groups with retaliation if, just if, they decide to act on their threats and kill Americans wherever they can find them, in any number they can.
Go ahead, defund the US military.
I only know her words, my friend. What she said it's all I have to work with.
Another reason why those who disagree with the climate change proponents are defective.
Mind you, the enlightened few do not suffer from these limitations. They are just better than the rest of us.
Margaret Sanger, their patron saint, certainly explained this.
0. MAD works when you know who detonated the first weapon. We may not know this.
1. MAD also presumes rational enemies, with motivation sufficiently equal to ours, to make their decisions more or less rational. We no longer live in that world. Many of our enemies do not have the same rationale for using nuclear weapons as we and other like nations do.
2. Even if we know who detonated a weapon, of they are stateless, we have limited retaliation opportunities. If any.
MAD is not useful for asymmetric threats.
Noting that the housing bubble circa 2005-2009 left many with those 'hard assets' so devalued that they did not cover the list balance, sometimes dramatically. In those cases, the lender takes a bath, just like a student lender essentially had no collateral at all.
So the government underwrites loans without collateral. Nice deal for all the other players ...
The housing bubble that started in 2005 resulted in my purchasing a rental property precisely at the height of the market. I had to, it was part of a deal. So when the bubble burst, the market value went to about 40% of loan balance in 2008, and stayed there until 2012.
I didn't 'walk away'. I endured countless calls from the lender's 'home retention team', or 'home affordability team', or whoever if they, THEY, processed my payment either on due date or mere hours later. They were deathly afraid I would do the rational thing and walk away.
But the property had positive cash from from day one. It made business sense for me to keep it. As of this year, it has equity value. Not much, but that's pretty good.
As an aside, I could have bought the neighboring property for $50k in 2011, which at that time was really fair market value. Same layout, a mirror image, but it needed a new roof, major remodels inside, and had no tenants. It looked like 30% down (commercial loan for income property), $30k of work, about $45K cash to buy and rent out a $50k property. Not very attractive.
But back to the story, I rented to one man who bought a home in early 2005, escaped most of the bubble here, but had a 3-year ARM that drove his payment from $1,500/mo to $3,800/mo. He walked way when it adjusted. No bank could fix this in 2008, for obvious reasons, and he also was working in commercial construction, which dried up. His income plummeted, and he eventually could not even pay rent.
'Lots' of people I know walked way from mortgages that far exceeded property value. It was a business decision, prompted by both buying at inflated prices, the subsequent collapse of the market, many had ARMs that went sky-high, combined with post-2008 layoffs, credit card debt that forced them into bankruptcy, and in many cases their being given a loan for over-priced homes appraised by unscrupulous appraisers in collusion with mortgage bankers and realtors. Yes, Realtors.
For a graduate who chose a major with no job prospects, and no ability to find alternative work that can pay the bills, default may make sense. If these defaults impact certain institutions more than others, perhaps we will see market pricing for either student loans or for programs. Let me explain:
If defaults occur for certain institutions, a market pricing approach would raise interest rates for those schools that suffer more defaults. This is bound to impact enrollment for some of these.
However, if defaults impact certain majors (philosophy and art being favorite examples), perhaps then lenders inquire about the student's course of study, and price it according to experience.
There are several possible outcomes to these actions:
- Some institutions may lower tuition. Unlikely at first, but if enrollment suffers because students can't finance their tuition, they may adjust.
- Some majors may become so unpopular that tuition has to drop. Maybe.
- Lenders may be asking more questions of students - job prospects, ability to pay, blah blah.
- The government may, just may, get out of the business
Consider this. In 2005, mortgage lenders started making loans that were literally indefensible. NINJA loans, Sallie May and Freddie Mac underwriting loans with dubious or nonexistent documentation, inflated values, collusion that is obvious in hindsight. Easy money that resulted in defaults when the real estate market corrected, and the economic downturn forced borrowers to make hard choices. Many 'walked way'. Now, five years later for the last of those, they find that they can in fact get a loan - the banks figured this out. Tighter requirements now for sure, but more like normal for the long-term market.
Now we have the federal government underwriting student loans for tuition that is increasing much faster than the CPI, with less value than ever, and borrowers have limited prospects for repaying these loans. Schools claim they offer value, but even seemingly good bets like MBAs and engin
The windows on EVs will not be significantly different from those on IC vehicles for some time. There is no need nor advantage to change them. In fact, systesm such as suspension, steering, passenger restraint, etc will not have to change much.
OTOH, we are still seeing '65 Mustangs being restored. How many 2015 Mustangs, with ECUs, center console LCDs, etc. will be restored when the electronics are beyond obsolete? There are some great cars from the 70s-80s that have serious electronic issues, some where OEM parts are no longer available.
EVs will have these problems also - imagine sourcing motor controllers 50 years from now.
I retain just enough to advise my customers using our APIs on how to log the data, fix some permissions, and point out the error is their hosed-up SSL install, and to go to StackOverflow and try not to be too annoying lest they be ridiculed and get no real help at all. No, I do not install packages for my customers, I do not wish to be their OS support.
Some beg me to fix their code. Ha. But I do point out when they are misspelled some directive or other, despite having good working sample code available to them. Credit card processing seeks a black art to them.
My own purposes have become minimal, but I am working on understanding some ISP control panels and VM architecture so I can manage things when the situation is desperate. I don't feel the need to run Linux for my desktop.
I use a Linux VM for editing audio and prepping it for distribution or use by students. It doesn't take much, bu I'm rarely required to provide much more than 128K MP3s, which are to me much like fingernails on chalkboards. My own libraries are 320k, and I'm resampling my CDs to Ogg Vorbis and WAV/WMV to let me do better. My Google libraries are, of course, 128K. I also think ATRAC is unfairly maligned, but don't fight that fight much.
I'm not a professional, but I know a few who use Linux as an environment for specialized audio work, usually finalizing masters for distribution or CDs, the few who bother to burn those now. For general audio, low latency drivers are had to maintain, but ask anyone who's used Windows and they may have stories of good workstations gone bad, requiring a reformat/reimage. Windows happens. Few admit that their OS X stations sometimes go all to hell, but while rarer, it happens. Mostly OS X upgrades cause audio workstations to go all to crap.
Painting Linux with such a broad brush is often unwarranted, but in audio it's somewhat more defensible. But not like you seem to think.
How true. My work has authorized Chrome, and I'm testing the 12 or so distinct internal sites to see how terrible they function with it. Most internal sites work best with IE8, but IE9 is usable, and IE10 manageable. Our most secure site no longer functions correctly with IE for internal users, but Firefox is an excellent option, and Chrome is functional. I have not reinstalled Firefox since my last upgrade.
But, our users for the site I primarily support use IE8,9,10, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. Safari is challenged, and we cannot officially support it. Firefox and Chrome are fine. IE8 now gives us trouble, since current releases have change so much that the site has gone from requiring IE8 Compatibility Mode to now requiring it be disabled. Fun times.
But, we have a few internal sites that require Java, mostly for image delivery and management, and for some specialized mainframe apps. Where it is used, it's a good solution.
Myself, I use Chrome almost exclusively for personal and website work. Chrome Dev for Android is working very well, and on both phone and tablet is my default browser. My wife is still stuck in IE, she's hard to change.
I've used Incognito mode a lot more lately, especially for sensitive research. It's amusing to look once at shipping containers for storage, figure out it's not worth it, and then suffer the ads for them for months - it's a hugely profitable business, and competitive from the looks of it. Or research headphones, decide to stick with what you've got, and be bombarded with headphone ads. Poor marketers, they try so hard...
Not complaining, I know Adblock etc would end this.
There is little more anonymous on /. than modding.
The evidence is there.
That alone explains the resistance (pun intended).
The French Revolution was a case study in the usurpation of power by those with the worst motives. To be avoided by all peaceful people.
My 2000 Explorer is mostly, if not all, metric.
It's already done. Get over it.
Fewer and fewer checks. Judges are predisposed towards prosecutors (and police) too often.
In Massachusetts, this victim is in real peril of going to jail. In Texas, less so.
More validation of the Tenth Amendment.
Your above-average slashdotter can, from the writeup, deduce everything necessary to form even substantive opinions, and post away.
If you need links, your google skillz are lacking. Word up.
Your average slashdotter is on thier own.
Your below-average slashdotter is posting as an AC anyways, and is superfluous.
Sadly, this is more of the 'management are idiots' theory
Sometimes correct, usually not, but comforting to the minions when they cannot find another explanation.
I'm entirely tired of this. Incompetence in virtually every market is, in fact, punished with failure. It may be even more discouraging to believe your management of intentional and deliberate, and competent, when they screw you, but to cling to the myth of incompetence is beneath thinking individuals. Not that corporate management cannot, sometimes, be incompetent, but the universal accusation is likely neither accurate nor helpful.
Actually, you should rather not explain every withdrawal that's *close to* $10k. And *close to* is defined by the investigative agency that has decided to take an interest in you or your activities.
And your bank will happily rat you out. They get brownie points for doing so, which both distracts the regulators from real problems, and gives them cred when they beg forgiveness for transgressions.
And yes, I know. I count the incumbent, since, you know, they are actually the President.