Unless the FBI is simply foaming at the mouth to create FUD and bungle this like they bungle everything else. It's more of a matter of industrial espionage rather than national security.
If the Chinese got ahold of that new laser weapon system from Northrop Grumman, I doubt you would make such a neat little dichotomy there between industrial espionage and national security.
The Chinese government is actually quite hostile to the United States and many other countries. Just look at what they're doing to Africa if you have any doubts as to whether or not this is a country you want having technology that can be used to assist them in becoming a credible player in space on a military footing.
This Physicist should probably be executed or imprisoned for life if there is any way to get such a sentence. In a more honest time, what he did would be considered treason in spirit, if not exactly the letter of the law.
One of the things that keeps us safe, and keeps us from fighting long, protracted wars is the fact that other countries have a damned hard time competing with us technologically on the battlefield. The Chinese have, for a long time, been trying to steal said technology from us. They really ramped it up after the first Persian Gulf War when their soldiers actually got to see what our technology could do when we unleashed a largescale attack on another country with our new weapon systems. One of the most effective ways for us to prevent a war is to make betraying military applicable technologies to their government an offense that most of these guys would never commit because the punishment is so severe.
If they aren't receiving state funds, then the state has no business putting this mandate on private institutions. Then again, this country has a long, sordid history of things like "attractive nuisance laws" like the ones which make people who have pools in their yards put up all sorts of fences to keep kids out of their yard (rather than arresting the kids for trespassing).
I remember guys ranting about how good C&C 3 for XBox 360 was on the controls. The only way I got halfway through the GDI campaign was by playing it on easy. I emphasize halfway because once I got to a point where I had to defend a base that was being attacked on at least two sides every time that Nod attacked, I couldn't accurately move my troops and assign repair orders to the base defenses.
Seriously, why can't Microsoft just release an update that enables keyboard and mouse support. There is absolutely no good reason why two sets of controls cannot be supported.
It won't be easy to prove to a potential employer that you work(ed) on the project, so you might as well not include it on your resume unless you're tenacious about it.
You are ignorant and wrong. Software up to 1979 was not copyrighted (it was an "innovative" use of copyright by Bill Gates at the time that started this trend).
Software was also not the driving force in the industry back then. Hardware was. Being able to copyright your software is an unqualified good because it gives you the ability to do things like release it under the GPL or sell licenses to others at a reasonable price. Good for Gates for helping us here.
Many interesting software advances: OS design (Multics, Unix, etc), programming language design (Lisp, C) were all done without software copyrights and were really "open source" or "Free Software" by today's definitions.
That was then, this is now. One of the benefits of having copyrights on this stuff is that any inventor can use international copyright law against people who do seriously uncool things with their software, like if someone decided to fork Python or the Linux kernel into a proprietary derivative. The law did actually adapt to changing times because now that the industry is worth a lot more, there is a lot more incentive to screw over everyone, especially open source coders who often make good code, but lack a huge corporate backer.
If anything, the involvement of for-profit corporations using closed-source has crippled the progress of software, as you would expect exponential progress in a field such as software, but arguably software progress has slowed down since 1979.
Early gains are frequently very, very quickly made in any area of research or industry. This is because they're new and there is so much to learn and work on. As they mature, there is less of a frontier for them to explore. In a century, we'll probably be having the same arguments about genetic engineering because by then, genetics will probably be as understood as any other field like programming or mechanical engineering.
Where people like Stallman stop begrudging others the right to make their own products and sell them. It's one thing to be critical of the fact that software is so much more restricted than say, a car or a new TV because of the contract they're able to get away. It's quite another to act like someone's rights are being violated because they have to buy a new copy of a program for each computer they want to run it on.
If corporations and other profit-seeking entities were not involved, free and open source software wouldn't have gotten anywhere. One inconvenient little fact that people like Stallman fail to understand is that consulting is no way to support a business that **makes** things. I doubt RedHat would be successful compared to Microsoft if they had to shoulder most of the R&D costs themselves.
You make ask yourself "why does this matter?" Because it turns the role of corporations in the economy on its head. They go from being the primary drivers of production, to being the primary beneficiaries of production because they are the ones making the few consulting bucks off of others' production of OSS code that can't be sold off as individual licenses due to it being open source.
I happen to like and support a lot of open source development, but having worked as a contractor since graduating college, I can't even imagine how fucked up our industry would be if it were run by consulting firms. They are some of the cheapest, most short-term thinking businesses in this country.
I'm not going to call Obama a communist, but his original plan for mandatory public service by all public school students is a variation of the old calls for an industrial army of the sort the Old Left used to advocate. If you want to be progressive, stop borrowing ideas from failed states like drafting unwilling people into public service.
You can't work for an agency like the Stasi and just apologize for it. To be forgiven, you must don sackcloth, repent and repudiate what you once stood for. If this politician hasn't repudiated everything--everything--the Stasi stood for, he should be hounded for life for having worked for them.
One of the things that modern society seems incapable of understanding is that erring on the laissez faire side of things can create really interesting services with minimal hassle. People focus excessively on perceived problems like "oh nos... without intrusive government regulations, the water would be poisoned!!" when a capitalist approach, holding those who harm others civilly and criminally liable for harm to limb and property would suffice in most cases.
These regulatory boards look great on paper to the sort of people who see the world through the rosy colored lenses of community involvement, communitarian ethics, etc., but they don't really work. The FCC is a glorious example of how such regulatory boards invariably get utterly coopted by those they are supposed to regulate.
The moral of stories like this is simple. If you are going to implement semi-socialistic policies like public busing or giving a company a monopoly on providing a bus service, at least have the good sense to compartmentalize that so much that it doesn't interfere with any other aspect of public life.
But one of the things you need to remember is that in many cases a predator will back away from prey that turns savage and violent when cornered.
Another thing... if a nerdy victim of bullying strikes first, they'll often get the upperhand against a more athletic opponent; the human body is nowhere near as immune to physical harm and the psychological shock from it as the movies present. I scared the ever loving shit out of a bully in school by suddenly grabbing him by the shirt and slamming him full force into a wall. You know what he knew could happen if he tried to punch me, then? I could have pulled him forward a little bit and slammed his head hard into a very hard surface, possibly giving him a concussion. A move that lasted a few seconds, caused him to leave me alone permanently after that.
My advice to any high school age nerd who is bullied is very simple:
1) Get more protein in your diet. 2) Find access to a place where you can quietly do strength training, starting out modestly at first. This will take you about 20 minutes a day, 3 days a week. 3) Be firm in dealing with others.
The main reason we have a lot of bullying is that we have policies that don't allow students to ever confront bullies and use force to defend themselves when attacked. If a student punches a bully in the face for trying to do some sort of nasty physical bullying, like locking them in a locker, they can get suspended/expelled and arrested.
Let the victims of bullies stand up for themselves. It used to work in this country. When my dad was bullied at an early age back in the 1950s, he and the bully got into a fight and the bully got beaten up. The principle not only didn't care about the harm done to the bully, but hauled him into his office and called his parents to let him know that he had gotten beaten up by a kid who he had severely bullied. Back then the courts would have laughed any lawsuit over that out of court and would have probably awarded legal fees to my grandmother if she had to hire a lawyer to defend my dad.
The solution to bullying isn't "education," it's letting them get subjected to the consequences of their actions. I would consider it poetic justice if in a modern incident like what happened to my dad, the kid not only beat up the bully, but posted the video to Youtube for the whole world to mock the shit out of the bully.
Don't give me that "oh they're hurting on the inside" argument for treating them like a wounded animal, instead of a predator. Most people choose to not become like those who hurt them. Those that do choose that path shouldn't be shown any particular mercy by society or the legal system when their victims put them harshly in their place.
What really matters with the internship is the professional experience you get. Get as much of it as you can while still getting your degree. My wife did four summers of internships and when she graduated, she was rated as having 2-3 years of professional work experience by her employer. The result was that they actually took her application pretty seriously and offered her good pay since she wasn't, strictly speaking, "entry level" anymore.
I got paid $7.50/hour starting out and ended up making $10/hour after a few months at my internship, which lasted 2 years through my university. That internship is what actually got me my first job; my employer just ignored my low GPA and focused on the fact that I had been interning as a software developer for 2 years for my university on a research project.
Bottom line is, be their bitch, as much as you can tolerate it. Let them task you with all sorts of technical work, even if it's making you work long, unpaid hours because when you graduate, it'll give you more leverage with a serious employer to demand more pay out of college.
I took one earlier this year. It was primarily good for testing my ability to regurgitate information about the language and APIs. That's it.
If I were an employer, I would give much more credence to someone coming in as an entry level hire or switching from another language if they had something like this. Lab-based, graded courses show that you have at least some practical ability to apply the material.
In hindsight, I agree with a professor of mine who said that a single, solid A in a 400-level CS class is probably worth more than any programming certification starting out. If you want to do this on the cheap, just take a few classes at a community college. That's what I'm doing to get some "official training" to back up the fact that I do know C# well enough to make the switch from Java. One or two audited courses will have the same effect, but cost me less than $300 and I'll only have to do a few homework assignments and exams:)
How long before the feds get involved?
on
Googling Security
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm predicting that Google's flu tracker is going to end up being used as an argument in favor of a federal data retention mandate if it turns out to be successful for the CDC. While DHS may have recently shown that datamining doesn't work on terrorists, I'll bet that it would certainly work on certain classes of other criminals like sex offenders. How long before the DoJ starts down this path by saying, "hey Google, why don't you keep an eye on suspicious searches for us, and let us know if someone reaches a threshold of $X searches/month so we can see if they're bad dudes banging little kids." The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Think I'm paranoid? Then explain why the USA PATRIOT Act was ready to go so soon after 9-11. It's not like they were just waiting for a justification to present it to Congress...
Seeing as how their country is being turned into a desert. I'm not sure which is worse, personally. Having your homeland washed out to sea, or being told that you have to make do with land that would require probably tens of billions of dollars (that you don't have, and probably will never have) to start turning into semi-usable living space.
Correct me if I am wrong here, but isn't most of that "unoccupied territory," "unoccupied" because it's a very harsh environment, basically desert, that isn't really suitable for settling?
I swear, it needs to become harder for people to form not-for-profit corporations and become "advocates" and activists. Too often such groups are good for nothing other than raising a stink over nothing, suing others, acting in petty, partisan ways, etc.
Are they vital to democracy? No. In fact, one of the things that such groups often make increasingly clear today is that they are enemies of liberty. It's one thing to protect everyone's right to speak their opinion (freedom of speech and freedom of the press). It's quite another for the law to make it easy to form tax-free organizations that exist entirely for the typically asinine purposes that most non-profits serve.
These people need to get lives and a real job doing something of value in the economy instead.
Is some authority to set the standards as a mandate for **all** federal agencies. All of them, no exceptions. One of the first things that should be done is to mandate equal consideration for.NET and LAMP because Java has way too much of a fanboi following in the federal government.
In reality, though, the position of CTO is likely to be more of a figurehead than a useful position. Obama is not likely to hand down an executive order authorizing the CTO to impose open standards and a "use the best tool for the job" method of selecting the tools that will be used for building new federal web sites and web applications.
The Bible says that it's your own responsibility to avoid temptation (2 Timothy 2:22). It doesn't tell you to lobby Congress to legislate away your temptations, it says to flee all lusts and temptations.
God's big into that "personal responsibility" thing that's out of fashion these days.
It took me 2.5 hours to vote this morning. There was a line waiting to vote that was starting to wrap around the entire outside of the school, its parking lot and all the way up inside toward the very back of the school. I've never seen this many people interested in voting, and I live on the outskirts of Northern Virginia (Herndon, to be exact) where we really don't have that many people.
A good educator can still turn this into a chance to teach students a valuable lesson. If they know that a popular position really is bullshit, based on real evidence, they can always steer the class in a way that the students will be able to see the evidence for what it is, but make the students have to put it all together to realize what was wrong.
And you know what the students get out of that? A lesson in critical thinking.
In most districts they don't even have to work a full day, and they get about 3-4 months off. I knew a math teacher in high school who taught 3 classes and 1 study hall. What she did was she graded all of her work during down time in class and study hall, and worked a second job when she felt like it. She was single and had plenty of time to use a second job to flesh out her work schedule for the entire year, and consequently, she made a pretty penny. Most of her peers were simply too lazy to follow her example.
Slashdot Mirror
If the Chinese got ahold of that new laser weapon system from Northrop Grumman, I doubt you would make such a neat little dichotomy there between industrial espionage and national security.
The Chinese government is actually quite hostile to the United States and many other countries. Just look at what they're doing to Africa if you have any doubts as to whether or not this is a country you want having technology that can be used to assist them in becoming a credible player in space on a military footing.
This Physicist should probably be executed or imprisoned for life if there is any way to get such a sentence. In a more honest time, what he did would be considered treason in spirit, if not exactly the letter of the law.
One of the things that keeps us safe, and keeps us from fighting long, protracted wars is the fact that other countries have a damned hard time competing with us technologically on the battlefield. The Chinese have, for a long time, been trying to steal said technology from us. They really ramped it up after the first Persian Gulf War when their soldiers actually got to see what our technology could do when we unleashed a largescale attack on another country with our new weapon systems. One of the most effective ways for us to prevent a war is to make betraying military applicable technologies to their government an offense that most of these guys would never commit because the punishment is so severe.
If they aren't receiving state funds, then the state has no business putting this mandate on private institutions. Then again, this country has a long, sordid history of things like "attractive nuisance laws" like the ones which make people who have pools in their yards put up all sorts of fences to keep kids out of their yard (rather than arresting the kids for trespassing).
I remember guys ranting about how good C&C 3 for XBox 360 was on the controls. The only way I got halfway through the GDI campaign was by playing it on easy. I emphasize halfway because once I got to a point where I had to defend a base that was being attacked on at least two sides every time that Nod attacked, I couldn't accurately move my troops and assign repair orders to the base defenses.
Seriously, why can't Microsoft just release an update that enables keyboard and mouse support. There is absolutely no good reason why two sets of controls cannot be supported.
It won't be easy to prove to a potential employer that you work(ed) on the project, so you might as well not include it on your resume unless you're tenacious about it.
Software was also not the driving force in the industry back then. Hardware was. Being able to copyright your software is an unqualified good because it gives you the ability to do things like release it under the GPL or sell licenses to others at a reasonable price. Good for Gates for helping us here.
That was then, this is now. One of the benefits of having copyrights on this stuff is that any inventor can use international copyright law against people who do seriously uncool things with their software, like if someone decided to fork Python or the Linux kernel into a proprietary derivative. The law did actually adapt to changing times because now that the industry is worth a lot more, there is a lot more incentive to screw over everyone, especially open source coders who often make good code, but lack a huge corporate backer.
Early gains are frequently very, very quickly made in any area of research or industry. This is because they're new and there is so much to learn and work on. As they mature, there is less of a frontier for them to explore. In a century, we'll probably be having the same arguments about genetic engineering because by then, genetics will probably be as understood as any other field like programming or mechanical engineering.
Where people like Stallman stop begrudging others the right to make their own products and sell them. It's one thing to be critical of the fact that software is so much more restricted than say, a car or a new TV because of the contract they're able to get away. It's quite another to act like someone's rights are being violated because they have to buy a new copy of a program for each computer they want to run it on.
If corporations and other profit-seeking entities were not involved, free and open source software wouldn't have gotten anywhere. One inconvenient little fact that people like Stallman fail to understand is that consulting is no way to support a business that **makes** things. I doubt RedHat would be successful compared to Microsoft if they had to shoulder most of the R&D costs themselves.
You make ask yourself "why does this matter?" Because it turns the role of corporations in the economy on its head. They go from being the primary drivers of production, to being the primary beneficiaries of production because they are the ones making the few consulting bucks off of others' production of OSS code that can't be sold off as individual licenses due to it being open source.
I happen to like and support a lot of open source development, but having worked as a contractor since graduating college, I can't even imagine how fucked up our industry would be if it were run by consulting firms. They are some of the cheapest, most short-term thinking businesses in this country.
I'm not going to call Obama a communist, but his original plan for mandatory public service by all public school students is a variation of the old calls for an industrial army of the sort the Old Left used to advocate. If you want to be progressive, stop borrowing ideas from failed states like drafting unwilling people into public service.
You can't work for an agency like the Stasi and just apologize for it. To be forgiven, you must don sackcloth, repent and repudiate what you once stood for. If this politician hasn't repudiated everything--everything--the Stasi stood for, he should be hounded for life for having worked for them.
When the military gets laser rifles, it'll be that much easier for to make the case for why "assault rifles" should be regulated like bb guns.
One of the things that modern society seems incapable of understanding is that erring on the laissez faire side of things can create really interesting services with minimal hassle. People focus excessively on perceived problems like "oh nos... without intrusive government regulations, the water would be poisoned!!" when a capitalist approach, holding those who harm others civilly and criminally liable for harm to limb and property would suffice in most cases.
These regulatory boards look great on paper to the sort of people who see the world through the rosy colored lenses of community involvement, communitarian ethics, etc., but they don't really work. The FCC is a glorious example of how such regulatory boards invariably get utterly coopted by those they are supposed to regulate.
The moral of stories like this is simple. If you are going to implement semi-socialistic policies like public busing or giving a company a monopoly on providing a bus service, at least have the good sense to compartmentalize that so much that it doesn't interfere with any other aspect of public life.
But one of the things you need to remember is that in many cases a predator will back away from prey that turns savage and violent when cornered.
Another thing... if a nerdy victim of bullying strikes first, they'll often get the upperhand against a more athletic opponent; the human body is nowhere near as immune to physical harm and the psychological shock from it as the movies present. I scared the ever loving shit out of a bully in school by suddenly grabbing him by the shirt and slamming him full force into a wall. You know what he knew could happen if he tried to punch me, then? I could have pulled him forward a little bit and slammed his head hard into a very hard surface, possibly giving him a concussion. A move that lasted a few seconds, caused him to leave me alone permanently after that.
My advice to any high school age nerd who is bullied is very simple:
1) Get more protein in your diet.
2) Find access to a place where you can quietly do strength training, starting out modestly at first. This will take you about 20 minutes a day, 3 days a week.
3) Be firm in dealing with others.
The main reason we have a lot of bullying is that we have policies that don't allow students to ever confront bullies and use force to defend themselves when attacked. If a student punches a bully in the face for trying to do some sort of nasty physical bullying, like locking them in a locker, they can get suspended/expelled and arrested.
Let the victims of bullies stand up for themselves. It used to work in this country. When my dad was bullied at an early age back in the 1950s, he and the bully got into a fight and the bully got beaten up. The principle not only didn't care about the harm done to the bully, but hauled him into his office and called his parents to let him know that he had gotten beaten up by a kid who he had severely bullied. Back then the courts would have laughed any lawsuit over that out of court and would have probably awarded legal fees to my grandmother if she had to hire a lawyer to defend my dad.
The solution to bullying isn't "education," it's letting them get subjected to the consequences of their actions. I would consider it poetic justice if in a modern incident like what happened to my dad, the kid not only beat up the bully, but posted the video to Youtube for the whole world to mock the shit out of the bully.
Don't give me that "oh they're hurting on the inside" argument for treating them like a wounded animal, instead of a predator. Most people choose to not become like those who hurt them. Those that do choose that path shouldn't be shown any particular mercy by society or the legal system when their victims put them harshly in their place.
What really matters with the internship is the professional experience you get. Get as much of it as you can while still getting your degree. My wife did four summers of internships and when she graduated, she was rated as having 2-3 years of professional work experience by her employer. The result was that they actually took her application pretty seriously and offered her good pay since she wasn't, strictly speaking, "entry level" anymore.
I got paid $7.50/hour starting out and ended up making $10/hour after a few months at my internship, which lasted 2 years through my university. That internship is what actually got me my first job; my employer just ignored my low GPA and focused on the fact that I had been interning as a software developer for 2 years for my university on a research project.
Bottom line is, be their bitch, as much as you can tolerate it. Let them task you with all sorts of technical work, even if it's making you work long, unpaid hours because when you graduate, it'll give you more leverage with a serious employer to demand more pay out of college.
I took one earlier this year. It was primarily good for testing my ability to regurgitate information about the language and APIs. That's it.
If I were an employer, I would give much more credence to someone coming in as an entry level hire or switching from another language if they had something like this. Lab-based, graded courses show that you have at least some practical ability to apply the material.
In hindsight, I agree with a professor of mine who said that a single, solid A in a 400-level CS class is probably worth more than any programming certification starting out. If you want to do this on the cheap, just take a few classes at a community college. That's what I'm doing to get some "official training" to back up the fact that I do know C# well enough to make the switch from Java. One or two audited courses will have the same effect, but cost me less than $300 and I'll only have to do a few homework assignments and exams :)
I'm predicting that Google's flu tracker is going to end up being used as an argument in favor of a federal data retention mandate if it turns out to be successful for the CDC. While DHS may have recently shown that datamining doesn't work on terrorists, I'll bet that it would certainly work on certain classes of other criminals like sex offenders. How long before the DoJ starts down this path by saying, "hey Google, why don't you keep an eye on suspicious searches for us, and let us know if someone reaches a threshold of $X searches/month so we can see if they're bad dudes banging little kids." The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Think I'm paranoid? Then explain why the USA PATRIOT Act was ready to go so soon after 9-11. It's not like they were just waiting for a justification to present it to Congress...
Seeing as how their country is being turned into a desert. I'm not sure which is worse, personally. Having your homeland washed out to sea, or being told that you have to make do with land that would require probably tens of billions of dollars (that you don't have, and probably will never have) to start turning into semi-usable living space.
Correct me if I am wrong here, but isn't most of that "unoccupied territory," "unoccupied" because it's a very harsh environment, basically desert, that isn't really suitable for settling?
For that annoying user who never shuts up... /[.]//
What's that? Cat got your tongue, troll?
I swear, it needs to become harder for people to form not-for-profit corporations and become "advocates" and activists. Too often such groups are good for nothing other than raising a stink over nothing, suing others, acting in petty, partisan ways, etc.
Are they vital to democracy? No. In fact, one of the things that such groups often make increasingly clear today is that they are enemies of liberty. It's one thing to protect everyone's right to speak their opinion (freedom of speech and freedom of the press). It's quite another for the law to make it easy to form tax-free organizations that exist entirely for the typically asinine purposes that most non-profits serve.
These people need to get lives and a real job doing something of value in the economy instead.
Is some authority to set the standards as a mandate for **all** federal agencies. All of them, no exceptions. One of the first things that should be done is to mandate equal consideration for .NET and LAMP because Java has way too much of a fanboi following in the federal government.
In reality, though, the position of CTO is likely to be more of a figurehead than a useful position. Obama is not likely to hand down an executive order authorizing the CTO to impose open standards and a "use the best tool for the job" method of selecting the tools that will be used for building new federal web sites and web applications.
The Bible says that it's your own responsibility to avoid temptation (2 Timothy 2:22). It doesn't tell you to lobby Congress to legislate away your temptations, it says to flee all lusts and temptations.
God's big into that "personal responsibility" thing that's out of fashion these days.
Or hire one less employee...
It took me 2.5 hours to vote this morning. There was a line waiting to vote that was starting to wrap around the entire outside of the school, its parking lot and all the way up inside toward the very back of the school. I've never seen this many people interested in voting, and I live on the outskirts of Northern Virginia (Herndon, to be exact) where we really don't have that many people.
A good educator can still turn this into a chance to teach students a valuable lesson. If they know that a popular position really is bullshit, based on real evidence, they can always steer the class in a way that the students will be able to see the evidence for what it is, but make the students have to put it all together to realize what was wrong.
And you know what the students get out of that? A lesson in critical thinking.
In most districts they don't even have to work a full day, and they get about 3-4 months off. I knew a math teacher in high school who taught 3 classes and 1 study hall. What she did was she graded all of her work during down time in class and study hall, and worked a second job when she felt like it. She was single and had plenty of time to use a second job to flesh out her work schedule for the entire year, and consequently, she made a pretty penny. Most of her peers were simply too lazy to follow her example.