I'm just stating the (ugly) rules of the (ugly) game, NOT making a moral judgement on them here. I excused nobody because I didn't place a value judgement on anybody's actions. I simply stated the "rules" as an observation of "if you want to do X, you have to do Y". Whether doing X is moral is another discussion.
When it comes to building, or using, or setting up software for consumer use, it just sucks. They often have a bidding contract and hand it out to whomever pays the least.
A typical gov't office or department ALSO uses lowest-bidder. Lowest-bidder is common practice in large org's and gov't. The fact the office server died without good backups suggests it wasn't given any more care than the kind of consumer-grade you talk about.
Lowest-bidder sucks, but so far nobody has come up with a better systematic alternative. Just make sure the requirements are thorough and verified.
As long as she either received a message from or forwarded/CC'd to a gov't server, she'd be IN compliance.
Since gov't servers were often poorly backed up (remember IRS incident), it may be difficult to rule out some forwarding even if no record is found. The "office" server has known gaps.
One problem: she has not violated any clear-cut law or written policy. If you claim otherwise, please cite the law text.
Note the office server she should have been using was not designed for secret email either. The home/office dichotomy is not a known difference maker, security-wise.
She already agreed the home server was a bad decision on her part. But so far it's not illegal nor a clear violation of policy at the time (pending unknown details).
As a general observation, the rich get rich by driving at the absolute edge of permissible law. And if you don't get rich, you cannot practically run for office. Therefore, if you want to be a viable politician, you have to stretch the limits. If you want to win, you have to play "the game".
Trump openly admits he butters the system, and takes full advantage of existing laws (such as bankruptcy).
If you want to fix this in a general sense, then find a way to take the money out of politics.
There are rare cases where people get rich yet are fully honest, but I doubt they'd have to skills to battle their slimebag political competition. It's hard to outwit a slimebag without having some experience in slimebaggery.
(Rather than push for STEM in schools, perhaps they can push for slimebag courses. It may be less outsourceable.)
She is supposed to be so smart yet she did not think that the Secretary of State would be handing confidential / secret / top secret information via email?
The "office" server she should have been using was ALSO not designed for confidential/secret info. Thus, the "home" thing is NOT the issue here (yet).
So far we don't know if anything she sent/received was secret at the time it was sent. That's still an open issue. We only know that some of it has since been classified (or should have been classified).
And if somebody did send her classified info, she still may not be culpable for it. Unless it's an obvious "special" message, it may not be her to job to determine classification categories anymore than it's her job to check server ports.
If somebody sends you a bad email, is it your fault or the senders?
If it's obviously a bad email, then the receiver should report it. But if it's subtlety bad (or secret) such that the determiner-of-badness is a specialized skill, then we wouldn't expect the receiver to also have that specialized categorization skill.
There's a lot of potential work-flow and responsibility paths here. The devil's in the details, which we don't have yet.
The "office" email server she should have been using may have also been poorly configured. We know it was poorly backed up because it crashed and data was lost.
If it was poorly backed up, it was likely poorly configured also because this suggests support in general was slack. At least her own server lasted longer.
We may be comparing a Ford Pinto to a Yugo here, except the Yugo has since died and been scrapped so that we cannot examine it (unless somebody kept an old scan record.)
I don't know why we have 3 different client-side languages: CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. Why not unite them? HTML (or XML) can define styles, and even be a scripting language, similar to ColdFusion (but with better use of attributes). We could then use some programming to get better factoring or control of styles etc.
Some suggest Lisp, but I have to agree Lisp is just too hard to read if the author is not really careful. (Some seem to be born with "Lisp eyes". I'm not one of them.) XML can be verbose, but is generally easier to read than Lisp for most. The block end marker having the same name as the block starter seems to help readability and make it easier to fix textual mistakes.
In 1988, X11R2 arrived with the addition of three colors, including the identical shades "gray" and "grey." According to Austin-based developer Alex Sexton, discussing the colors at a JavaScript Conference last year, programmers at Hewlett-Packard couldn't remember the proper spelling (which was originally with an 'a'). Including two names, it was thought, would prevent errors.
I looked into this once, and found that one is a UK convention and the the other a US convention (gray).
Economics is a science, or at least would be if done right.
Science is about predicting, modeling, and understanding the real world. Economics is the real world.
The "problem" is that it's a messy science with lot of variables, including human behavior. It's also difficult to get something close to controlled studies, as each situation is a different combo of factors. But this is also true of cosmology where we can't reboot the universe to try different things: we have to observe just the one we got.
Just because it's a difficult science does NOT make it a non-science. Nobody said science has to be easy to be science.
...based on a deterministic view of the universe - one without quantum mechanics. This viewpoint is false.
A deterministic model may be a sufficient emulation even if not a perfect emulation.
After all, a lot of people take drugs, caffeine, alcohol, get smashed in the head in football or a swimming accident, get diabetes, and still are usually more or less themselves. The brain is designed to handle a degree of "noise" and damage, and this could very well include the "noise" of an imperfect model of itself. How much is "good enough", we don't yet know.
The "war crimes" laws are too vague. But the USA has indeed done lots of highly foolish things regardless of the legal category of the boneheaded actions.
Slashdot Mirror
Correction: should be "Whether doing Y is moral is another discussion".
I'm just stating the (ugly) rules of the (ugly) game, NOT making a moral judgement on them here. I excused nobody because I didn't place a value judgement on anybody's actions. I simply stated the "rules" as an observation of "if you want to do X, you have to do Y". Whether doing X is moral is another discussion.
A typical gov't office or department ALSO uses lowest-bidder. Lowest-bidder is common practice in large org's and gov't. The fact the office server died without good backups suggests it wasn't given any more care than the kind of consumer-grade you talk about.
Lowest-bidder sucks, but so far nobody has come up with a better systematic alternative. Just make sure the requirements are thorough and verified.
I expect a "man-in-the-middle exploit" joke in 3...2...1...
As long as she either received a message from or forwarded/CC'd to a gov't server, she'd be IN compliance.
Since gov't servers were often poorly backed up (remember IRS incident), it may be difficult to rule out some forwarding even if no record is found. The "office" server has known gaps.
I don't think you read your article.
No problem, I'll just put my gov't work on a home server.
One problem: she has not violated any clear-cut law or written policy. If you claim otherwise, please cite the law text.
Note the office server she should have been using was not designed for secret email either. The home/office dichotomy is not a known difference maker, security-wise.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
She already agreed the home server was a bad decision on her part. But so far it's not illegal nor a clear violation of policy at the time (pending unknown details).
As a general observation, the rich get rich by driving at the absolute edge of permissible law. And if you don't get rich, you cannot practically run for office. Therefore, if you want to be a viable politician, you have to stretch the limits. If you want to win, you have to play "the game".
Trump openly admits he butters the system, and takes full advantage of existing laws (such as bankruptcy).
If you want to fix this in a general sense, then find a way to take the money out of politics.
There are rare cases where people get rich yet are fully honest, but I doubt they'd have to skills to battle their slimebag political competition. It's hard to outwit a slimebag without having some experience in slimebaggery.
(Rather than push for STEM in schools, perhaps they can push for slimebag courses. It may be less outsourceable.)
The "office" server she should have been using was ALSO not designed for confidential/secret info. Thus, the "home" thing is NOT the issue here (yet).
So far we don't know if anything she sent/received was secret at the time it was sent. That's still an open issue. We only know that some of it has since been classified (or should have been classified).
And if somebody did send her classified info, she still may not be culpable for it. Unless it's an obvious "special" message, it may not be her to job to determine classification categories anymore than it's her job to check server ports.
If somebody sends you a bad email, is it your fault or the senders?
If it's obviously a bad email, then the receiver should report it. But if it's subtlety bad (or secret) such that the determiner-of-badness is a specialized skill, then we wouldn't expect the receiver to also have that specialized categorization skill.
There's a lot of potential work-flow and responsibility paths here. The devil's in the details, which we don't have yet.
The "office" email server she should have been using may have also been poorly configured. We know it was poorly backed up because it crashed and data was lost.
If it was poorly backed up, it was likely poorly configured also because this suggests support in general was slack. At least her own server lasted longer.
We may be comparing a Ford Pinto to a Yugo here, except the Yugo has since died and been scrapped so that we cannot examine it (unless somebody kept an old scan record.)
I don't know why we have 3 different client-side languages: CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. Why not unite them? HTML (or XML) can define styles, and even be a scripting language, similar to ColdFusion (but with better use of attributes). We could then use some programming to get better factoring or control of styles etc.
Some suggest Lisp, but I have to agree Lisp is just too hard to read if the author is not really careful. (Some seem to be born with "Lisp eyes". I'm not one of them.) XML can be verbose, but is generally easier to read than Lisp for most. The block end marker having the same name as the block starter seems to help readability and make it easier to fix textual mistakes.
That's a gray area :-)
In the real world, you can't control all the code. In fact, you are lucky if you control 10% based on typical organizational conventions.
And changes in versions/standards/new-bugs etc. of browsers, databases, languages, etc. do break stuff. One cannot predict the future.
I looked into this once, and found that one is a UK convention and the the other a US convention (gray).
Economics is a science, or at least would be if done right.
Science is about predicting, modeling, and understanding the real world. Economics is the real world.
The "problem" is that it's a messy science with lot of variables, including human behavior. It's also difficult to get something close to controlled studies, as each situation is a different combo of factors. But this is also true of cosmology where we can't reboot the universe to try different things: we have to observe just the one we got.
Just because it's a difficult science does NOT make it a non-science. Nobody said science has to be easy to be science.
Indeed. It's when the libraries (or combos) don't work as expected that the real skill kicks in.
The real test is when stuff goes haywire, NOT when it works as advertised.
^ Sample troll #1
Dear Future,
Please DON'T extract and emulate the trolls.
Thanks
-Present
A deterministic model may be a sufficient emulation even if not a perfect emulation.
After all, a lot of people take drugs, caffeine, alcohol, get smashed in the head in football or a swimming accident, get diabetes, and still are usually more or less themselves. The brain is designed to handle a degree of "noise" and damage, and this could very well include the "noise" of an imperfect model of itself. How much is "good enough", we don't yet know.
Does the dinosaur have to be 18 or over?
We declare ownership of your mom's basement in the name of Slashdot!
Now, where did I put that damned flag?
Technically we are all insensitive clods.
The "war crimes" laws are too vague. But the USA has indeed done lots of highly foolish things regardless of the legal category of the boneheaded actions.
Sounds wonderful! Now if they could just stop exploding.