Well, presumably you do a little bit of both. But the former is far more important. Furthermore, you have to ask yourself -- who is best equipped to help themselves succeed? While we all like to imagine ourselves as millionaire geniuses who really just "fell between the cracks", actual millionaire geniuses manage to succeed without a lot of hand-holding.
As Sean Connery said in The Rock, "Losers always whine about doing their best. Winners go home and **** the Prom Queen."
So, if US intelligence services determine, exactly, the location of Osama Bin Laden, we can either...
Kill Him
Listen in on his phone conversations (requires warrant)
The "Protect America Act" only restores the status quo. It was created in response to a recent ruling -- a judge on the FISA court suddenly decided that warrants were needed to domestically eavesdrop on foreign targets. It was a bizarre ruling with zero precedent and clearly flies in the face of congressional intent. The Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton administrations never ever needed a warrant in the same situation.
Because a lot of people still claim that Washington (and all politicians therein) are ordered around by giant corporations.
Whereas we can see the opposite thing happen with new industries : they think they can get by without dedicate lobbying and then suddenly get screwed (or realize that they are close to getting screwed) and only at that point do they start to make themselves known politically.
Of course, once the danger has passed they'll ask for (and often get) massive subsidies and pork that we all pay for, which certainly does suck.
If you do a recount for no other reason than crazy people have decided it's necessary, I'm sure they will be satisfied with recount findings that the recount was unnecessary.
People are crazy, but only so far. Give into a crazy person once and they become a rational, thoughtful individual.
I might be wrong, but the document you pointed to seems to be the actual budget for FY 2008 (the one approved by congress), while the document mentioned in the article is the President's proposed budget, which the democratic congress (like the republican congress before it) will laugh at.
Whether it's a Russian Bomber in international airspace, Osama in a cave in Pakistan, or a blog on the internet, Bush needs to read the constitution, which requires the US government to get a warrant before collecting information on any of these things.
This isn't to mention Bush's greatest threat to the constitution. The Bush administration has been using Satellites (in Space) to spy on other countries -- even our enemies -- without first getting warrants. And I won't even get into the rampant (warrantless) newspaper reading that goes on in the CIA and NSA and up the ladder straight to the white house.
It's impeachment time. The sheeple of the US need to stand up and do what's right.
How many Bush operatives are going to get nailed for deleting files?
If there's a legal requirement to keep something I read or write at work, I kind of just assume that deleting data will not eradicate it. You know -- if it's a felony to delete my email, I would just assume that IT would have that covered and be saving all of my email, instead of requiring me to archive it on my own computer (which isn't backed up).
This is one of the reasons they are going after Rove. He read some email and then deleted it. Add in IT idiots and all of the sudden it's a coverup -- turns out there was no archive other than his inbox.
If a Russian Bomber penetrates US airspace, do you think we need a warrant to listen in on their radio communications? Or do you think that since they are agents of a foreign (and potentially hostile) power that eavesdropping on them is a national security issue -- not law enforcement, and as such falls under the purview of the president?
Then why do we need a warrant to listen in on an AQ operative? In fact, a recent (absurd) court decision stated that even if the AQ operative was overseas we would need a warrant to listen in to his phone conversation. When you heard about emergency FISA legislation lately, this is what it was meant to remedy.
On top of being absurd, getting warrants in these cases would likely be impossible. Law Enforcement is all about processes and procedures because you need to adhere to these things to get a conviction. Obviously, intelligence worries only about gathering intelligence and wouldn't know how to obtain a warrant.
The biggest problem with the "Bush and Cheney Executive Dictator" argument is that they get the sole blame for endorsing policies that every president has endorsed. No president has ever maintained that they could not run warrantless wiretaps for national security reasons.
Would slashdot post a counter-terror expert talking about computer security if he had no experience whatsoever in that field?
Then why would slashdot post a computer security expert talking about counter-terrorism or law enforcement when he has no experience whatsoever in that field?
"It Just Don't Look Right" is a time-tested law enforcement mantra. It isn't something George W. Bush cooked up after 9/11 -- it's around because so many crimes, and so many terrorist plots have been busted up by investigating the unusual and unexpected.
Proving that the document has been "forged" is pretty much impossible, since we would literally have to know who wrote it.
What we do have is 1) the knowledge that it looks exactly like something produced today in Microsoft Word, and 2) typewriter experts who say that the only way this document could have been produced at the time was with an extremely expensive and rare typewriter with several custom modifications. It's entirely possible that such a typewriter did not exist, let alone happen to be in a Texas Air National Guard office.
Having to "prove" that it's a forgery is a pretty tall and unreasonable order. Dan Rather is supposed to be a journalist -- it's his job to prove his allegations are either true, or that it's highly likely they are true -- not the critic's job to prove it is absolutely false. Instead he presented it as fact when it's 99.999% certain that it's fake.
There's a lot of useful run-off from legitimate government projects, like space travel and military projects. Those things, however, are useful in their own right and are not funded for the useful "side-effects".
As far as private industry being "unable" to afford the research, I kind of doubt it. If they know it will be profitable, they will always be able to afford it. Having the government fund it because it 'might' produce good results usually just wastes tons of money.
These sorts of things always come up : that somehow, because the US gov't isn't funding some sort of research the US is "falling behind". There was a huge amount of fear about this in the early 1980's... the Japanese were pouring tons of money into AI research.
Well, here's a thought -- the US is the economic juggernaut of the world. If US companies aren't spending boatloads of money on physics research, it might be because nothing it could produce is economically viable or useful.
As it turned out, the huge Japanese AI research push produced little of value, but cost a ton of money.
The experience of the 1970s and 1980s taught us that if a technology is commercially viable, then government support is not needed and if a technology is not commercially viable, no amount of government support will make it so.
Writing a proposal (for a competitive bid) requires an enormous amount of effort. Not only that, but the proposal does not write itself. The contractor will end up having its best people writing the proposal (meaning they aren't doing useful contractor work), the government will have it's best people evaluating the contract (meaning they aren't helping the contractors doing useful work), and the money being spent writing and evaluating the proposal is obviously not paying for useful work.
So having a compete is a huge waste of time and money. Nevertheless, it is pretty useful, and many contracts are awarded as the result of competitive bids.
However, while not knowing much about the Iraq reconstruction effort, it is extremely difficult to imagine that there was time to take competitive bids and evaluate them. Time was of the essence, and KBR was up to the task. You either give them a no-bid contract or people will die while you're evaluating proposals.
Furthermore, while I have heard a lot of lefties complaining and complaining about Halliburton, it's notable who you don't hear complaining : other government contractors. The fact of the matter is that most companies don't want to send people to Iraq, it's very dangerous. My (gov't contracting) company requires a VP to personally sign off on any employee trip to the middle east : that's not something you do when you are looking to expand business there.
People who leave their computers unsecured deserve to get hacked.
People who get taken in by con men deserve to get scammed.
I have a question : do girls who wear skimpy clothes deserve to be raped? Does a black guy who whistles at a white woman deserve to get killed?
Here's one for you : you're an idiot, and for that travesty, you deserve nothing bad to happen to you! You deserve the same love and respect as any other human being!
Although the forum abuse -- you definitely had coming.
I have worked on some rather large and complex systems. And I'm fairly certain if you turned some academics loose on said systems, they would find "critical flaws" that they would tout to anyone who would listen.
The thing is... the systems I've worked on actually work. The "critical flaws" that I'm sure could be found don't actually break the system.
And so far it appears to be the same with the Diebold systems. All these Academics and Slashdotters are outraged about a system that, so far, hasn't failed in the way they predicted.
The fact of the matter is that grant-to-grant academics don't understand engineering, because they've never really had to engineer anything.
Oh, and, just something to savor : if it weren't for all the politicization that has resulted from this business (to which Slashdot contributed a not insignifcant part) some competent gov't contractor might have gotten in the business and blown Diebold out of the water. Of course, now they wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot contracting pole. Enjoy Diebold!
The government says "hey, that's classified" and starts an investigation
the investigation leads to a news outfit
Someone (likely the same someone from #1 who is now scared) tips off ABC news to the investigation.
What part of that is your worst case scenario? Is the government enforcing a law that terrifying to you?
I'm scared as well -- but I'm scared that the president, elected by the people, can now, in effect, by vetoed by any bureaucrat who decides they dislike his policies.
I vote for the president of the US. I don't get to vote for journalists or bureaucrats. Unless you do, I'm not sure why you think that their imaginary rights should trump our real ones.
Last sentence of the fourth paragraph should be the last sentence of the fifth paragraph.
How much do I love every forum outside k5 and slashdot, where you can edit your posts:[ .
Remember waaaaaay back when when you were desperately trying to protect reporter's rights to not divulge their sources when an administration official leaked classified information
Many liberals (and most conservatives) never read anything (or very little) from the other side of the aisle.
It's comical, actually. I read DKos sometimes, and it's painfully obvious he never reads anything that the right produces.
One time he came up with a beaut : he said that conservatives thought liberals were in bed with terrorists, but that couldn't be, because liberals hate the mean right-wing authoritarian societies that the terrorists want!
Which would be great, except that if he'd ever read any conservative publication, just once, he would read about how frustrated conservatives were that liberals were weak on terror, since, you know, terrorists are mean right-wing authoritarians and the left shouldn't like that. It could be a nice lesson about how both sides believe what they say, but that would be touchy-feely and uncynical, so we should avoid it.
Likewise, the right thought that the leak records would exonerate the administration (just as the left thought it would condemn them). So, actually, both sides wanted the information released, and condemned the reporters that wouldn't release it.
This or this were typical of the conservative criticisms of Judith Miller and Matt Cooper for not talking to prosecutors.
A "Confidential Source"... tells the reporter that they government is checking phone records looking for leaks.
This guy wasn't warned about civil liberties being violated, he's a leaker worried about his own ass. If he wasn't guilty of a crime, there would be no reason to be worried about the feds now, would there?
I'm really not comfortable with simply letting the administration decide which internal leaks are whistleblowers, and which are national security risks.
The President of the United States is elected as the Executive of the US. Like Every Other President, He is empowered to release whatever the hell classified information he wants.
That's a nifty special power the President and (recently) the VP have. Also, elected officials (meaning the pres, VP, and members of congress) don't have to get investigated for security clearances, unlike all their staff. Even Condi and Rummy have to get insulted by Polygraphers.
There's a good reason he has this power : do you remember, before the Iraq War? Everyone was clamoring for more information? Even the democrats? (Especially the Democrats.) How do you think Bush was going to provide this information? Google? Of course he had to declassify stuff, and I can't imagine that anybody would not understand that.
Anyway, the "bad leakers" were not empowered to leak anything. They were not elected as president or VP. They were not authorized to leak by the president or the VP. In fact, they did what they did to undermine the elected representative of the people. What they did is illegal and they should go to jail.
I'm really not comfortable with simply letting the administration decide which internal leaks are whistleblowers, and which are national security risks.
And, as I've described above, the administration is not "deciding" who is legally leaking and who isn't. Prosecutors do. In fact, you can play the home game. If you aren't (A) the Pres or VP, or (B) authorized by the same, you go to jail if you leak to the press.
If something illegal is being done that's classified, you are fully within your rights to report it To Congress.
That's the escape hatch. That's the oversight. You report to congress, and congress investigates. You are protected from prosecution.
You leak to the press if you care more about elections than justice. And that's exactly what's been happening. Leaks from the CIA have all been aimed at the president.
I mean, that should worry you, because if the US President is now no longer allowed to make his own foreign policy -- without first getting the approval of every lowly bureaucrat at the CIA, we are all truly fucked.
I say, fire the lot of them, and disband State on the way home. The US people do not elect bureaucrats, and they should not get veto power over the president we do elect.
Slashdot Mirror
What should be the job of a public school?
Well, presumably you do a little bit of both. But the former is far more important. Furthermore, you have to ask yourself -- who is best equipped to help themselves succeed? While we all like to imagine ourselves as millionaire geniuses who really just "fell between the cracks", actual millionaire geniuses manage to succeed without a lot of hand-holding.
As Sean Connery said in The Rock, "Losers always whine about doing their best. Winners go home and **** the Prom Queen."
So, if US intelligence services determine, exactly, the location of Osama Bin Laden, we can either ...
The "Protect America Act" only restores the status quo. It was created in response to a recent ruling -- a judge on the FISA court suddenly decided that warrants were needed to domestically eavesdrop on foreign targets. It was a bizarre ruling with zero precedent and clearly flies in the face of congressional intent. The Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton administrations never ever needed a warrant in the same situation.
I consider this pretty much a perfect system for CS, where there are a lot of frustrating non-academic problems to deal with.
Because a lot of people still claim that Washington (and all politicians therein) are ordered around by giant corporations.
Whereas we can see the opposite thing happen with new industries : they think they can get by without dedicate lobbying and then suddenly get screwed (or realize that they are close to getting screwed) and only at that point do they start to make themselves known politically.
Of course, once the danger has passed they'll ask for (and often get) massive subsidies and pork that we all pay for, which certainly does suck.
If you do a recount for no other reason than crazy people have decided it's necessary, I'm sure they will be satisfied with recount findings that the recount was unnecessary.
People are crazy, but only so far. Give into a crazy person once and they become a rational, thoughtful individual.
I might be wrong, but the document you pointed to seems to be the actual budget for FY 2008 (the one approved by congress), while the document mentioned in the article is the President's proposed budget, which the democratic congress (like the republican congress before it) will laugh at.
I was hoping the newspaper reading thing would make the joke clear.
Unless your post is counter-sarcasm.
This isn't to mention Bush's greatest threat to the constitution. The Bush administration has been using Satellites (in Space) to spy on other countries -- even our enemies -- without first getting warrants. And I won't even get into the rampant (warrantless) newspaper reading that goes on in the CIA and NSA and up the ladder straight to the white house.
It's impeachment time. The sheeple of the US need to stand up and do what's right.
How many Bush operatives are going to get nailed for deleting files?
If there's a legal requirement to keep something I read or write at work, I kind of just assume that deleting data will not eradicate it. You know -- if it's a felony to delete my email, I would just assume that IT would have that covered and be saving all of my email, instead of requiring me to archive it on my own computer (which isn't backed up).
This is one of the reasons they are going after Rove. He read some email and then deleted it. Add in IT idiots and all of the sudden it's a coverup -- turns out there was no archive other than his inbox.
Then why do we need a warrant to listen in on an AQ operative? In fact, a recent (absurd) court decision stated that even if the AQ operative was overseas we would need a warrant to listen in to his phone conversation. When you heard about emergency FISA legislation lately, this is what it was meant to remedy.
On top of being absurd, getting warrants in these cases would likely be impossible. Law Enforcement is all about processes and procedures because you need to adhere to these things to get a conviction. Obviously, intelligence worries only about gathering intelligence and wouldn't know how to obtain a warrant.
The biggest problem with the "Bush and Cheney Executive Dictator" argument is that they get the sole blame for endorsing policies that every president has endorsed. No president has ever maintained that they could not run warrantless wiretaps for national security reasons.
Would slashdot post a counter-terror expert talking about computer security if he had no experience whatsoever in that field?
Then why would slashdot post a computer security expert talking about counter-terrorism or law enforcement when he has no experience whatsoever in that field?
"It Just Don't Look Right" is a time-tested law enforcement mantra. It isn't something George W. Bush cooked up after 9/11 -- it's around because so many crimes, and so many terrorist plots have been busted up by investigating the unusual and unexpected.
What we do have is 1) the knowledge that it looks exactly like something produced today in Microsoft Word, and 2) typewriter experts who say that the only way this document could have been produced at the time was with an extremely expensive and rare typewriter with several custom modifications. It's entirely possible that such a typewriter did not exist, let alone happen to be in a Texas Air National Guard office.
Having to "prove" that it's a forgery is a pretty tall and unreasonable order. Dan Rather is supposed to be a journalist -- it's his job to prove his allegations are either true, or that it's highly likely they are true -- not the critic's job to prove it is absolutely false. Instead he presented it as fact when it's 99.999% certain that it's fake.
It does go a long way towards explaining the epidemic of bus jumping accidents.
As far as private industry being "unable" to afford the research, I kind of doubt it. If they know it will be profitable, they will always be able to afford it. Having the government fund it because it 'might' produce good results usually just wastes tons of money.
These sorts of things always come up : that somehow, because the US gov't isn't funding some sort of research the US is "falling behind". There was a huge amount of fear about this in the early 1980's ... the Japanese were pouring tons of money into AI research.
Well, here's a thought -- the US is the economic juggernaut of the world. If US companies aren't spending boatloads of money on physics research, it might be because nothing it could produce is economically viable or useful.
As it turned out, the huge Japanese AI research push produced little of value, but cost a ton of money.
Here's a good quote about the value of government research.
So having a compete is a huge waste of time and money. Nevertheless, it is pretty useful, and many contracts are awarded as the result of competitive bids.
However, while not knowing much about the Iraq reconstruction effort, it is extremely difficult to imagine that there was time to take competitive bids and evaluate them. Time was of the essence, and KBR was up to the task. You either give them a no-bid contract or people will die while you're evaluating proposals.
Furthermore, while I have heard a lot of lefties complaining and complaining about Halliburton, it's notable who you don't hear complaining : other government contractors. The fact of the matter is that most companies don't want to send people to Iraq, it's very dangerous. My (gov't contracting) company requires a VP to personally sign off on any employee trip to the middle east : that's not something you do when you are looking to expand business there.
I love, love, LOVE this slashdot meme.
People who leave their computers unsecured deserve to get hacked.
People who get taken in by con men deserve to get scammed.
I have a question : do girls who wear skimpy clothes deserve to be raped? Does a black guy who whistles at a white woman deserve to get killed?
Here's one for you : you're an idiot, and for that travesty, you deserve nothing bad to happen to you! You deserve the same love and respect as any other human being!
Although the forum abuse -- you definitely had coming.
In addition, the academics doing these studies are typically CS guys, and CS is far, far the fuck away from any sort of real-life engineering.
I have worked on some rather large and complex systems. And I'm fairly certain if you turned some academics loose on said systems, they would find "critical flaws" that they would tout to anyone who would listen.
The thing is ... the systems I've worked on actually work. The "critical flaws" that I'm sure could be found don't actually break the system.
And so far it appears to be the same with the Diebold systems. All these Academics and Slashdotters are outraged about a system that, so far, hasn't failed in the way they predicted.
The fact of the matter is that grant-to-grant academics don't understand engineering, because they've never really had to engineer anything.
Oh, and, just something to savor : if it weren't for all the politicization that has resulted from this business (to which Slashdot contributed a not insignifcant part) some competent gov't contractor might have gotten in the business and blown Diebold out of the water. Of course, now they wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot contracting pole. Enjoy Diebold!
What part of that is your worst case scenario? Is the government enforcing a law that terrifying to you?
I'm scared as well -- but I'm scared that the president, elected by the people, can now, in effect, by vetoed by any bureaucrat who decides they dislike his policies.
I vote for the president of the US. I don't get to vote for journalists or bureaucrats. Unless you do, I'm not sure why you think that their imaginary rights should trump our real ones.
Last sentence of the fourth paragraph should be the last sentence of the fifth paragraph. How much do I love every forum outside k5 and slashdot, where you can edit your posts :[ .
It's comical, actually. I read DKos sometimes, and it's painfully obvious he never reads anything that the right produces.
One time he came up with a beaut : he said that conservatives thought liberals were in bed with terrorists, but that couldn't be, because liberals hate the mean right-wing authoritarian societies that the terrorists want!
Which would be great, except that if he'd ever read any conservative publication, just once, he would read about how frustrated conservatives were that liberals were weak on terror, since, you know, terrorists are mean right-wing authoritarians and the left shouldn't like that. It could be a nice lesson about how both sides believe what they say, but that would be touchy-feely and uncynical, so we should avoid it.
Likewise, the right thought that the leak records would exonerate the administration (just as the left thought it would condemn them). So, actually, both sides wanted the information released, and condemned the reporters that wouldn't release it.
This or this were typical of the conservative criticisms of Judith Miller and Matt Cooper for not talking to prosecutors.
This guy wasn't warned about civil liberties being violated, he's a leaker worried about his own ass. If he wasn't guilty of a crime, there would be no reason to be worried about the feds now, would there?
The President of the United States is elected as the Executive of the US. Like Every Other President, He is empowered to release whatever the hell classified information he wants.
That's a nifty special power the President and (recently) the VP have. Also, elected officials (meaning the pres, VP, and members of congress) don't have to get investigated for security clearances, unlike all their staff. Even Condi and Rummy have to get insulted by Polygraphers.
There's a good reason he has this power : do you remember, before the Iraq War? Everyone was clamoring for more information? Even the democrats? (Especially the Democrats.) How do you think Bush was going to provide this information? Google? Of course he had to declassify stuff, and I can't imagine that anybody would not understand that.
Anyway, the "bad leakers" were not empowered to leak anything. They were not elected as president or VP. They were not authorized to leak by the president or the VP. In fact, they did what they did to undermine the elected representative of the people. What they did is illegal and they should go to jail.
And, as I've described above, the administration is not "deciding" who is legally leaking and who isn't. Prosecutors do. In fact, you can play the home game. If you aren't (A) the Pres or VP, or (B) authorized by the same, you go to jail if you leak to the press.That's the escape hatch. That's the oversight. You report to congress, and congress investigates. You are protected from prosecution.
You leak to the press if you care more about elections than justice. And that's exactly what's been happening. Leaks from the CIA have all been aimed at the president.
I mean, that should worry you, because if the US President is now no longer allowed to make his own foreign policy -- without first getting the approval of every lowly bureaucrat at the CIA, we are all truly fucked.
I say, fire the lot of them, and disband State on the way home. The US people do not elect bureaucrats, and they should not get veto power over the president we do elect.