They are legally required to report to the DEA because the IRS doesn't communicate that information to government agencies with two exceptions:
I am not following your logic here. What legitimate business does the DEA have in knowing who is spending large amounts of money?
OTOH, who carries brief cases of cash with them?
Someone who does not trust banks? That is a right that people have; I think it is silly, but why should the government demand that people participate in the banking system?
For example if you are a travelling street performer, they might talk to you the first time, make a note and then you'll be fine.
Except that it is not anyone's business, except perhaps the IRS, who might want the information to process an income tax payment. As noted above, the information is not being reported to the IRS, which is basically the only agency which has anything resembling a legitimate need for such information (actually, that is inaccurate; the IRS will receive a report if the amount is large enough, but the DEA reporting threshold is much lower).
Some behavior are suspicious fro a reason, so finding more information about what's going on is reasonable.
How dare you make a large cash transaction?! You are being reported to the paramilitary law enforcement/intelligence agency that makes and enforces drug laws!
Banks are required, by law, to report any cash transaction over a certain amount (several thousand dollars, if I remember correctly) to the DEA. Yes, the DEA, not the IRS as one might have expected.
You must be new here (in patent land). You cannot patent math, but you can patent math on a computer! It's different, really! So what if people have been giving gifts for thousands of years (I suspect even longer than that)? It's ON A COMPUTER so it is obvious novel and needs a government-enforced monopoly to promote further innovation!
All 3 of the salaries for an IT degree listed are 60k or above.
Except that the people who are being hired for IT jobs are not limited to people who received those degrees. There are plenty of IT jobs out there that are paying low wages. I have seen attempts to hire IT workers at $40k/yr and even less than that.
There are people making less than that who are paid even less. entry/mid level managers, accountants, etc, etc, etc that have access to sensitive information.
I do not dispute that, but an IT guy can set up a system that restricts their access to such information in order to mitigate that risk. The IT guys themselves, however, have direct access to servers and even workstations, and could do all sorts of things -- install keystroke logging software, take backup tapes home, intercept secret keys, etc. They may also be in a position to modify security systems or to set up covert channels.
In general, anyone who has that level of access to sensitive information should not be a low paid worker, whether that access is a part of their daily job e.g. a manager or because they manage computer systems i.e. an IT guy.
If you really think honest people will steal data if you pay them slightly less than 6 figures--that says more about you than other people.
It really depends on the value of that data. If a competitor or foreign government is willing to pay millions of dollars for that data, your "honest" IT guy making just under six figures may suddenly become a dishonest IT guy (in which case, you really need someone with a vested interested in the business to manage security -- and only give your lower-pay IT staff the minimum access that is necessary). This is probably not a concern for the majority of businesses, but the lower the salary of your IT staff, the more of a concern it becomes.
For a business whose computers store and process trade secrets, low paid IT workers are a liability. Someone who is desperate may not need to think twice about selling some trade secrets for two years' salary. CERT even has guidelines for mitigating this threat, though some of this would require an IT guy to configure in the first place (skip to page 63):
You may not be paying just for skills; you may also be paying for a trustworthy person (and why shouldn't people with impeccable ethics be paid more?).
"You work with a computer" is a great way to diminish the value of IT work...until you realize that most people have such a poor understanding of computers that they would be helpless without an IT worker. Most businesses today are dependent on computers, by extension, dependent on their IT staff.
The demands placed on IT staff are often very high. How many lines of work expect you to be on call 24x7? How many lines of work demand that you travel to a data center during a snow storm so that you can figure out why some server is down? If you are going to demand these sorts of things from people, it is not at all unreasonable for those people to demand better wages.
Not all IT work is as simple as you might think; it is not always a matter of configuring servers and repairing workstations. Some systems are complex, mission critical, and need lots of attention. IT workers can be asked to write a lot of code to extend software or to connect otherwise incompatible programs. The quality of the work done in such cases can be translated into dollars, and mistakes can be very costly as well.
There are also cases of IT guys being asked to clean up some other person's mess. You probably heard this sort of story before: the last IT guy was incompetent, jumped ship or died, and now nobody understands all those perl scripts he wrote to manage the systems. So the new IT guy's first task is to build new management tools, document those tools, and make sure that everyone knows how everything works. That is not a light workload, especially if you are being asked to do it side-by-side with run-of-the-mill IT work, nor is it necessarily simple.
So no, it is not unreasonable for IT workers to complain about $35k/yr salaries. Really, considering how critical IT work can be in a business, I would say that it is risky for a business to hire someone willing to work for such a low salary -- they will either do something corrupt, jump ship and leave you looking for a new IT guy, or they really do not know what they are doing.
5. Many employers refuse to hire any employee immediately out of college, because studies have shown that technical staff make their big mistakes in their first 2 years on the job. That leads directly to the "can't get experience without a job, can't get a job without experience" problem.
This is a problem that could be solved if universities were willing to let students run their computer systems. I don't just mean students owning their own desktops, I mean really running the school's systems -- maintaining software, managing servers, etc. There are plenty of students at just about any university who could do this, and yet the schools would rather just hire a bunch of IT staff to cover these things.
I am not a fan of turning universities into vocational schools, but this seems like a fair compromise -- students could continue to receive a quality education in their courses, but still get real-world IT experience if they want it. It could be rolled into a financial aid program, so that those students don't have such a heavy debt burden when the enter the job market.
Of course, schools will first have to get over the fact that a student in a server room could potentially try to change grades. Perhaps by issuing keys to professors, so that grades are actually certified by the person who gave them.
Yet the companies are continuing to pay slave wages -- the power is in their hands to boost their IT budgets, but they do not. I suspect that having your IT staff make mistakes and then jump ship is acceptable to these corporations.
You left out low salaries. It amazes me how little companies are paying their IT workers, while simultaneously complaining about the lack of competent IT staff and the risk of a low-paid tech guy leaking their trade secrets.
Market forces put those salaries where they are. The IT positions are hard to fill, not impossible to fill; there are enough people willing to be slaves.
"The Bible is not an ancient mathematics textbook, therefore it is inaccurate and unbelievable." Somehow it seems a bit arrogant to assume that a concept that most (but apparently not all) scientists are familiar with would be a complete mystery to an omniscient being.
The concept is, however, a mystery to a large number (and I would go as far as to conjecture a majority) of the people who read the bible and who rely on it as a source of knowledge. One would think that an omniscient being could have taken the time to clarify a simple detail like significant figures, or to explain why it is necessary or sensible to report both the radius and the circumference of a circle.
"The Bible does not report every detail of daily life as experienced by the people of the time, therefore it is inaccurate and unbelievable."
You are the one who tried to bring scientific reporting techniques into this conversation, not me. When scientists report a measurement, they are expected to report how that measurement was taken so that other people can assess their technique and possibly duplicate their results. With this passage in the bible, we are left guessing about how the measurement was taken -- was it based on the dimensions of someone's arm? Was it based on a standardized rod? A ruler? Some other apparatus?
The "large margins of error" you proclaim happen to be within the margin of error for the reported measurements
Those margins of error are enormous by any reasonable standard, and any scientific paper would need to explain why they are so big. If taking the measurements was particularly difficult with ancient technology, then they are acceptable measurements since nobody would expect anything better -- but as noted above, we have no idea how those measurements were taken.
You keep harping on about significant figures, but you miss a more general point: the bible was not written by some omniscient being, it was written by people thousands of years ago. Those people were not mathematicians or scientists, and the is no reason to expect that what they wrote should be remotely accurate. Take the bible for what it is: an ancient book of stories, poems, and edited copies of government records. It is absurd to use the bible as a record of anything scientific -- not merely because of a passage about a round object, but because of the sheer weight of scientific evidence against biblical assertions.
If you read a paper that you found interesting wouldn't you want a way to find more papers from that individual?
Papers generally have the authors' contact information; if you are really having problems just using a person's name and the field they are in, you can send them an email or visit their website.
Is there a serious problem with authors sharing names? I am sure it happens, but (a) it seems unlikely that they would be in the same field and (b) it seems even less likely that they would be at the same institution and (c) even less likely that their contact information would be the same so are there really cases where there is confusion over who wrote a paper?
I guess by the MPAA's logic, that is another $37 billion added to the cost of piracy. After all, if there were no piracy, that money would not "have to" be spent, right?
It's conspiratorial thinking AND slut shaming AND rape apologetics
Right...any suggestion that a woman who files dubious rape charges did so at the behest of someone who is trying to smear someone is "slut shaming" and "rape apologetics." It is crazy think that there could be any sort of conspiracy against Wikileaks or Assange; it is not as if they have been publishing information that some of the most powerful organizations in the world were trying to keep secret, right?
In case you have forgotten, the charges against Julian Assange were already dropped by the original prosecutor in the case, due to a lack of evidence, and new charges have not even been filed. He is being extradited for an interrogation by a different prosecutor who is trying to revive the case, but who cannot even find enough evidence to do so. One of the "victims" threw a party in Assange's honor within 24 hours of supposedly being raped, and sang his praise on her Twitter account during that party. The two "victims" both publicly bragged about having spent a night with Assange after supposedly being raped. How many rape victims go around bragging about having had sex with their attacker?
I know it is hard, but feminists have to accept the fact that sometimes rape accusations are false and are made for the purpose of attacking a man's reputation.
I suspect Assange is a contrarian, not a libertarian
Actually, he is most likely a cryptoanarchist, judging by his behavior and use of cryptography to fight governments and large corporations, as well as his involved with the cypherpunks community in the 90s.
I guess you did not notice the stir that Wikileaks, an organization that was led by Julian Assange, created over the past few years. You know, the revelations about banks, about the US government, about the "global intelligence" industry, and numerous other corrupt organizations?
the alleged sexual offences happened in Sweden. It's not as if they want to try him on some nebulous charges
I must admit, it is easy to forget an important detail: the original prosecutor dropped the case entirely, citing a lack of evidence. Sounds pretty nebulous to me...
People are expected to alter their travel schedules to be interrogated? The case was initially dropped for lack of evidence -- so what is the purpose of demanding that he be flown to Sweden for a special "interrogation?"
so the investigation can be finished.
They need to talk to him just to finish the investigation? Is Sweden not a country where people have the right to remain silent? They must have difficulty finishing their investigations when suspected criminals refuse to answer police questions...
A cryptoanarchist creates an organization whose purpose is to help whistleblowers release information.
A soldier from the United States uses his access to military computers to leak documents and videos related to the US war effort in the middle, through the above whistleblower organization. This same soldier also leaks US diplomatic cables. This soldier is later betrayed by a hacker and is arrested.
The cryptoanarchist goes to Sweden; while in Sweden, he has sex with women who have connections to the CIA.
The CIA-connected women claim that the cryptoanarchist raped them, under Sweden's broad definition of rape.
The cryptoanarchist is placed under house arrest in England, while the British courts decide whether or not he can be extradited to Sweden. That matter has now been settled; he will be extradited.
The soldier who leaked the documents, videos, and cables remains in solitary confinement in the United States, and must be given antidepressants as a result of the psychological stress of having no human contact for most of his days.
This whistleblower organization remains active, but has been shaken to its core. Its leadership is in shambles, its reputation has been smeared by the mainstream media, banks have refused to process payments made to that organization, and people who need to blow the whistle on corrupt organizations are left in the same situation they were in before: relying on the technically illiterate journalists that work at traditional media outlets.
I can't think of a single item I own that was actually made in USA. I own plenty of stuff made by US companies, but as far as I'm aware not on US soil.
Well, off the top of my head, here are things I own that were made in the USA:
2 of my rifles
Bullets
A briar pipe
A zippo lighter
A pocket knife
Fishing gear
An NRA-made pen (made from rifle cartridges, of course)
Now, as for my clothes, books, computers, furniture -- the things I use in my day-to-day life (thank God I don't use a rifle in my daily life) -- those things were not made in the USA.
Slashdot Mirror
They are legally required to report to the DEA because the IRS doesn't communicate that information to government agencies with two exceptions:
I am not following your logic here. What legitimate business does the DEA have in knowing who is spending large amounts of money?
OTOH, who carries brief cases of cash with them?
Someone who does not trust banks? That is a right that people have; I think it is silly, but why should the government demand that people participate in the banking system?
For example if you are a travelling street performer, they might talk to you the first time, make a note and then you'll be fine.
Except that it is not anyone's business, except perhaps the IRS, who might want the information to process an income tax payment. As noted above, the information is not being reported to the IRS, which is basically the only agency which has anything resembling a legitimate need for such information (actually, that is inaccurate; the IRS will receive a report if the amount is large enough, but the DEA reporting threshold is much lower).
Some behavior are suspicious fro a reason, so finding more information about what's going on is reasonable.
How dare you make a large cash transaction?! You are being reported to the paramilitary law enforcement/intelligence agency that makes and enforces drug laws!
Banks are required, by law, to report any cash transaction over a certain amount (several thousand dollars, if I remember correctly) to the DEA. Yes, the DEA, not the IRS as one might have expected.
The ancient ideal was realized centuries ago when precious metals were used as money. It was difficult to counterfeit.
It was also difficult to scale to a growing population. Which is exactly the reason we stopped relying on weights of metals as a currency.
Doing the same thing electronically?
You must be new here (in patent land). You cannot patent math, but you can patent math on a computer! It's different, really! So what if people have been giving gifts for thousands of years (I suspect even longer than that)? It's ON A COMPUTER so it is obvious novel and needs a government-enforced monopoly to promote further innovation!
Find me a constructive activity to do with gaming consoles
This guy did:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_hotz
Of course, if inner-city black children were doing that sort of thing, they would probably be arrested and charged with a variety of crimes.
All 3 of the salaries for an IT degree listed are 60k or above.
Except that the people who are being hired for IT jobs are not limited to people who received those degrees. There are plenty of IT jobs out there that are paying low wages. I have seen attempts to hire IT workers at $40k/yr and even less than that.
There are people making less than that who are paid even less. entry/mid level managers, accountants, etc, etc, etc that have access to sensitive information.
I do not dispute that, but an IT guy can set up a system that restricts their access to such information in order to mitigate that risk. The IT guys themselves, however, have direct access to servers and even workstations, and could do all sorts of things -- install keystroke logging software, take backup tapes home, intercept secret keys, etc. They may also be in a position to modify security systems or to set up covert channels.
In general, anyone who has that level of access to sensitive information should not be a low paid worker, whether that access is a part of their daily job e.g. a manager or because they manage computer systems i.e. an IT guy.
If you really think honest people will steal data if you pay them slightly less than 6 figures--that says more about you than other people.
It really depends on the value of that data. If a competitor or foreign government is willing to pay millions of dollars for that data, your "honest" IT guy making just under six figures may suddenly become a dishonest IT guy (in which case, you really need someone with a vested interested in the business to manage security -- and only give your lower-pay IT staff the minimum access that is necessary). This is probably not a concern for the majority of businesses, but the lower the salary of your IT staff, the more of a concern it becomes.
Here's the right one: http://www.cert.org/archive/pdf/CSG-V3.pdf
http://www.cert.org/archive/pdf/CSG-V3.pdf&sa=U&ei=fmrGT72xCcmX6QHq3dilBg&ved=0CBsQFjAF&usg=AFQjCNEONyDP1ESvK1JeiGPbzIYlGYaoQw
You may not be paying just for skills; you may also be paying for a trustworthy person (and why shouldn't people with impeccable ethics be paid more?).
There are also cases of IT guys being asked to clean up some other person's mess. You probably heard this sort of story before: the last IT guy was incompetent, jumped ship or died, and now nobody understands all those perl scripts he wrote to manage the systems. So the new IT guy's first task is to build new management tools, document those tools, and make sure that everyone knows how everything works. That is not a light workload, especially if you are being asked to do it side-by-side with run-of-the-mill IT work, nor is it necessarily simple.
So no, it is not unreasonable for IT workers to complain about $35k/yr salaries. Really, considering how critical IT work can be in a business, I would say that it is risky for a business to hire someone willing to work for such a low salary -- they will either do something corrupt, jump ship and leave you looking for a new IT guy, or they really do not know what they are doing.
5. Many employers refuse to hire any employee immediately out of college, because studies have shown that technical staff make their big mistakes in their first 2 years on the job. That leads directly to the "can't get experience without a job, can't get a job without experience" problem.
This is a problem that could be solved if universities were willing to let students run their computer systems. I don't just mean students owning their own desktops, I mean really running the school's systems -- maintaining software, managing servers, etc. There are plenty of students at just about any university who could do this, and yet the schools would rather just hire a bunch of IT staff to cover these things.
I am not a fan of turning universities into vocational schools, but this seems like a fair compromise -- students could continue to receive a quality education in their courses, but still get real-world IT experience if they want it. It could be rolled into a financial aid program, so that those students don't have such a heavy debt burden when the enter the job market.
Of course, schools will first have to get over the fact that a student in a server room could potentially try to change grades. Perhaps by issuing keys to professors, so that grades are actually certified by the person who gave them.
Yet the companies are continuing to pay slave wages -- the power is in their hands to boost their IT budgets, but they do not. I suspect that having your IT staff make mistakes and then jump ship is acceptable to these corporations.
You left out low salaries. It amazes me how little companies are paying their IT workers, while simultaneously complaining about the lack of competent IT staff and the risk of a low-paid tech guy leaking their trade secrets.
Market forces put those salaries where they are. The IT positions are hard to fill, not impossible to fill; there are enough people willing to be slaves.
"The Bible is not an ancient mathematics textbook, therefore it is inaccurate and unbelievable." Somehow it seems a bit arrogant to assume that a concept that most (but apparently not all) scientists are familiar with would be a complete mystery to an omniscient being.
The concept is, however, a mystery to a large number (and I would go as far as to conjecture a majority) of the people who read the bible and who rely on it as a source of knowledge. One would think that an omniscient being could have taken the time to clarify a simple detail like significant figures, or to explain why it is necessary or sensible to report both the radius and the circumference of a circle.
"The Bible does not report every detail of daily life as experienced by the people of the time, therefore it is inaccurate and unbelievable."
You are the one who tried to bring scientific reporting techniques into this conversation, not me. When scientists report a measurement, they are expected to report how that measurement was taken so that other people can assess their technique and possibly duplicate their results. With this passage in the bible, we are left guessing about how the measurement was taken -- was it based on the dimensions of someone's arm? Was it based on a standardized rod? A ruler? Some other apparatus?
The "large margins of error" you proclaim happen to be within the margin of error for the reported measurements
Those margins of error are enormous by any reasonable standard, and any scientific paper would need to explain why they are so big. If taking the measurements was particularly difficult with ancient technology, then they are acceptable measurements since nobody would expect anything better -- but as noted above, we have no idea how those measurements were taken.
You keep harping on about significant figures, but you miss a more general point: the bible was not written by some omniscient being, it was written by people thousands of years ago. Those people were not mathematicians or scientists, and the is no reason to expect that what they wrote should be remotely accurate. Take the bible for what it is: an ancient book of stories, poems, and edited copies of government records. It is absurd to use the bible as a record of anything scientific -- not merely because of a passage about a round object, but because of the sheer weight of scientific evidence against biblical assertions.
If you read a paper that you found interesting wouldn't you want a way to find more papers from that individual?
Papers generally have the authors' contact information; if you are really having problems just using a person's name and the field they are in, you can send them an email or visit their website.
Is there a serious problem with authors sharing names? I am sure it happens, but (a) it seems unlikely that they would be in the same field and (b) it seems even less likely that they would be at the same institution and (c) even less likely that their contact information would be the same so are there really cases where there is confusion over who wrote a paper?
Copyright infringement is always supposed to be decided by the courts; otherwise, we can have no fair use defense...
Oh, I see what you did there...
I guess by the MPAA's logic, that is another $37 billion added to the cost of piracy. After all, if there were no piracy, that money would not "have to" be spent, right?
It's conspiratorial thinking AND slut shaming AND rape apologetics
Right...any suggestion that a woman who files dubious rape charges did so at the behest of someone who is trying to smear someone is "slut shaming" and "rape apologetics." It is crazy think that there could be any sort of conspiracy against Wikileaks or Assange; it is not as if they have been publishing information that some of the most powerful organizations in the world were trying to keep secret, right?
In case you have forgotten, the charges against Julian Assange were already dropped by the original prosecutor in the case, due to a lack of evidence, and new charges have not even been filed. He is being extradited for an interrogation by a different prosecutor who is trying to revive the case, but who cannot even find enough evidence to do so. One of the "victims" threw a party in Assange's honor within 24 hours of supposedly being raped, and sang his praise on her Twitter account during that party. The two "victims" both publicly bragged about having spent a night with Assange after supposedly being raped. How many rape victims go around bragging about having had sex with their attacker?
I know it is hard, but feminists have to accept the fact that sometimes rape accusations are false and are made for the purpose of attacking a man's reputation.
I suspect Assange is a contrarian, not a libertarian
Actually, he is most likely a cryptoanarchist, judging by his behavior and use of cryptography to fight governments and large corporations, as well as his involved with the cypherpunks community in the 90s.
I guess you did not notice the stir that Wikileaks, an organization that was led by Julian Assange, created over the past few years. You know, the revelations about banks, about the US government, about the "global intelligence" industry, and numerous other corrupt organizations?
the alleged sexual offences happened in Sweden. It's not as if they want to try him on some nebulous charges
I must admit, it is easy to forget an important detail: the original prosecutor dropped the case entirely, citing a lack of evidence. Sounds pretty nebulous to me...
suspected of a crime
refused to return for interrogation
People are expected to alter their travel schedules to be interrogated? The case was initially dropped for lack of evidence -- so what is the purpose of demanding that he be flown to Sweden for a special "interrogation?"
so the investigation can be finished.
They need to talk to him just to finish the investigation? Is Sweden not a country where people have the right to remain silent? They must have difficulty finishing their investigations when suspected criminals refuse to answer police questions...
As if this is a new tactic? Convincing everyone that your enemy is a sexual predator or deviant is the oldest trick in the book.
Does that help clarify things?
I can't think of a single item I own that was actually made in USA. I own plenty of stuff made by US companies, but as far as I'm aware not on US soil.
Well, off the top of my head, here are things I own that were made in the USA:
Now, as for my clothes, books, computers, furniture -- the things I use in my day-to-day life (thank God I don't use a rifle in my daily life) -- those things were not made in the USA.