A lot of the major internet backbone cable go through the United States or allied countries. If you and a tap on one of those it wouldn't be too hard to actually suck large percentages of the worlds daily telecommunications traffic. Some of the earlier slides that were released effectively implied that is exactly what they are going as well.

Odds are enough information has already been released that any analyst worth their paycheck already has a pretty good idea as to how most of the NSA systems work. I'd also be willing to be that most software engineers with a web background out there already have a pretty good idea how they are doing things. This is of course assuming that other people didn't already figure this out before hand.

Plus, all of the NSA systems are apparently vunerable to the good old fashioned dead drop since they can't monitor non-electronic systems. That's also not exactly a secert to anyone either.

Assuming they are telling the truth about 50+ plots being foiled, then another way to look at it is that it costs them around $16 million per foiled plot. That sounds like a big number but in light of September 11 that is comparitively cheap to the $100 billion plus finaincal impact.

I could have been a bit clearer on the logic, but basically, governments historically have a longer continuity of existence than private corporations which allows for the powers of compound interest to apply to build up the buffer. $1,000,000 deposited at 2.5% interest in 1776 with no additional deposits would be $347,981,453.54 today, actual buying power not withstanding.

Very few companies have really proven that they can stand the test of time yet and the list of ones that people thought would and failed is quite extensive. Not that the same thing doesn't apply to national governments but regional governments (mostly cities) can have records that date back hundereds of years as a matter of course.

Massachusetts resident here and the taxes here are actually less than they are in states near by such as New York or Connecticut. Plus, there are a lot of people that regularly do such things as start voter-initiated ballot questions to get rid of the income tax. As far as services go, I've lived in other states that claimed to be (or actually were) fiscally conservative and you got what you paid for when it came to government services.

Which is how pension funds are not supposed to be run in the first place. If you run a pension correctly it should work more like a 401(k) in that the money goes into an account that you then don't touch until a certain date. For large organizations you can calculate out how much you need to fund an employee's retirement long before they even retire. The government would actually be the best suited to pensions since they can build up enough of a buffer over time that they should effectively be immune to fluctuations in the market and could eventually hit a point where they wouldn't even need to pay in to the pension accounts again. In short, bad fiscal management is the problem, no pensions themselves.

Assuming you mean people that are 21 to 29 years old, then the popularity has a lot to do with the fact that "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" stone came out in 1997 and it took ten years for the series to be published. Someone that was 10 when the first book came out would have been 20 when the last one did so effectively the entire generation grew up with the Harry Potter series.

Again, I never said that chartered companies were bad. You keep trying to read a percived bias into very short comments.

Although since you bring up the question of ethics, I would argue that there is an ethical difference since an individual can be held responsible for their actions but a large organization cannot. Although that is a very long discussion in and of itself and it's one that people have been arguing back and forth for a long time now.

No, he was a tradesman and there might not have been any profit motive involved depending upon the size of the herd and how remote the individual was from a center of trade.

I never said that and you should go back and re-read my comments if you don't believe me. I said that business in and of itself is not necessary for human survival which is a true statement. Trade and businesses might help to ensure human survival is easier, but they aren't necessary from that standpoint.

All businesses may engage in some form of trade, but not all trade is business. The difference is that business is conducted between organized groups of individuals (i.e. chartered companies) where as trade can be conducted as the group or individual level.

Alright, you get a half point since Roman collegia do share some properties with the modern chartered companies that I was thinking of. The chartered companies date to 17th century though, so my point still stands. One of the key features of modern corporations is that they can fail but the individual assets of the participates in that corporation are protected.

I suspect you haven't studied much history since what most people think of "business" in the modern standpoint is only a couple hundred years old. Most of your examples have more to do with "trade" as opposed to "business" per se. Trade and trading has ways been around and is an effective aspect of human survival, but business in itself is not necessary for human survival.

I'm not sure where you are in the world, but assuming the United States, $25,000 to $35,000 is roughly half of the average entry level programmer salary of about $55,000. So you are looking for a skilled worker for less than someone fresh out of college could make? I suspect you have some unrealistic expectations, or you might need to get a bit more creative about things. I know quite a few programmers that would be willing to pick up a side job for those rates but don't expect them to work the same hours as a full time employee.

There is a huge difference between a paycut (the rule of thumb is that non-profits pay 15% less then industry on avearge) and a significant paycut that will impact your standard of living.

How's that compare to terrestrial radio though? My understanding is that the artists are paid a royalty based upon the number of plays on the radio, but a large station might broadcast to hundreds of thousands of people. If you were to break down to the cost per person listening on the radio to a streaming site the the royalty might actually end up being more in that case.

It should be noted that this could be a really good way to get enough of a taste for academia to see if you really want to pursue it as a career and a three year project is more than enough to get a taste for things. Plus, if you decide you don't want to do it, afterwards such things do look good on a CV or resume so returning from industry is not that difficult.

Right now one of the easier fields to break into with only a Bachelors degree is bioinformatics and the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA is always looking for programmers to come work for them in the various cancer research groups. As the others have already pointed out though, in research there is a ceiling in place if you don't have a Ph.D and realistically a research-based (i.e. thesis) Master's degree is going to be needed if you actually want to have career progression somewhere without having the Ph.D since there are enough people with them being graduated these days.