The problem is not the diplomat's limo, but getting there. Equador doesn't have a private limo port that could be considered part of the embassy.

All of these 'situations' assume embassies that look a lot like the embassies that the US or Britain might normally have in foreign capitals.... Big mansion-like buildings surrounded by a fence... certainly something with a nice private place for a limo to pull up and still be on embassy grounds. Equador doesn't have one of those.

Equador has a bit of office space in the middle of a building that has other office space. There is no private helipad or carport or other place to try any of the 'situations' that anyone has suggested. You can safely assume that he elevators/doors/stairs/windows are under surveillance. There'll be no sneaking.

How much is an acre-foot? Is it like a football-field-hand? American or Brazilian or Australian Football? How many hogsheads is that? Or Troy Ounces?

By that logic, there is no such thing as climate change. CO2 emissions do not change the underlying system, and were they do stop completely, the system would, in time, revert/adjust. By your logic, climate change can't exist unless thermodynamic laws (or whatever) are changed.

Anyone who thinks that the deployment of [technologies] across large portions of Earth's surface will not have significant impact is delusional. Don't be that guy.

All "clean" energy, whether wind, solar, hydro, coal, fission, etc. is merely "relatively" clean. Wind kills birds and warms areas downstream. Coal makes smog and dumps carbon. Hydro kills fish and and alters local climate. Fission makes giant lizards emerge from Tokyo bay...

Let's stop software developers from testing their work as well. Be serious.

Testing is not the "problem" and is probably not the "solution". If you do not check for progress, you cannot know whether your effort (in teaching, programming, rocket construction) has been successful.

I seem to recall we saw this a while ago:
http://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-purp.html
Odd to hear it so clearly from MS now.

Mod Up.

The real problem with teachers' union contracts is not the contracts themselves or the steps or the pensions or the benefits... the problem is that we place Kindergarten teachers (whose main skill is being 'good with kids') on the same scale as Physics teachers (who still have to have rapport with their students but also have to have a mastery of science and mathematics).

The contract writers do know this, so they try to split the difference since the union won't let them fix the problem. K-7 teachers are ridiculously overpaid in general and advanced subjects teachers are still underpaid by a wide (50%+) margin.

Strongly disagree here. This is the drivel (IMO, sorry) that has become popular in amongst educators and education speakers in the past decade or so. Yes 'learning process' is important, but the 'facts' we ask primary and secondary students to apply this to are not arbitrary.

We have learned over a time as a species (or culture or nation perhaps) that this particular set of facts is important. The reading, writing, mathematics, history, and more, and their associated 'facts', are all absolutely worthy, important, and necessary in and of themselves. It is for this reason that we have developed organized systems to pass theses facts on to future generations. The facts are important. Period.

We wonder why young students discount the value of these facts. We should ask first whether their opinion matters. Youth have _always_ discounted the value of their elders' knowledge initially - but we have weakened our own position by accepting this drivel - this indefensible position - that the facts are not worthy of being passed on.

As for 'learning process', as we value the 'facts' less, we do a poorer job of conveying learning process as well. We have so discounted (for example) the memorization 'process' [after all, why should students memorize dates or people or events?!] that many of our students can't... but try to approach calculus without memorized multiplication facts. Writing skills (not handwriting) have declined as we teach less grammar (grammar is the SYNTAX of the language; important 'facts'). The fact that we can google (or duckduckgo) the facts does not help much in practice...

Sorry for the rant but this stuff bothers me.

If that is true, you are correct. Publishing something that was sent to him is not and should not be a crime.

Even if he solicited it- begged for someone to send him helicopter videos- it is not and should not be a crime.

If, however, someone wrote to him and said 'i think I know where i can get some diplomatic cables but I'm not sure how to get them without getting caught' and he offered any advice.... well then that's conspiracy.

If accessing or disclosing confidential records without explicit permission of the owner(s) or subject(s) (or conspiring to do so) is a crime in a jurisdiction where he gets caught, then extradition is a possibility. If doing this is not a crime (or is a protected right) in that jurisdiction, he is in the clear.

The reason working societies mostly make acting within the law the only accepted determination of "good" and "evil" are that these things can be relative. Think abortion; drug use; immigration; sexuality; gambling; "marriage"; colonialism; slavery; education; evolution; climate policy... even contract and tort law... Reasonable people disagree about the correct position on these and more. Some have strongly held beliefs.

Ok, which? Laws against killing? Should an anti-abortion activist kill aborters? Too incendiary? Killing is absolute?

How about property laws then? Should stealing from teachers who teach (or don't) evolution be OK? What if it's just data being stolen? Credit info? Diaries?

Maybe we don't steal from people we dislike... maybe we just remove the veneer of privacy; let the world judge them? Maybe we release their communications? Their address? Maybe we release evidence of what may be bad acts (or good acts) and let the world judge?

  Maybe it's just OK to do this to governments? Laws that protect life and property and whatever apply only to individuals who have not acted on behalf of a government? Or maybe that's just property laws?

I guess I don't get it.

That's awful shortsighted.

Manning worked for the US military and eventually made it his purpose to subvert it. He entered the military voluntarily - the US does not have a draft and Manning was not part of a social class that had no options. He abused his position, broke his oath, and acted to place materials whose secrecy he was supposed to protect... into the hands of enemies (and friends, frenemies, neutrals, and basically anyone who cared to look). Frankly, he deserves what he gets.

There is a larger debate that should be had about how much of that information really should be secret, and if so from who, and then for how long. Even if we assume that Manning was doing 'the right thing by [caring] about freedom of information, exposing war crimes, and holding the powerful responsible for their atrocities , his acts are those of a vigilante. Thus, his methods subvert his cause.

If he did what he did and blindly uploaded to wikileaks... well then that's the end of it. He's a naive fool who thought his cause of the week was worth the risk. Maybe he still feels that way?

If, OTOH, he asked wikileaks for help... if JA helped him decide what to steal; how to steal it; how to cover his thefts, etc... if JA persuaded Manning to do as he did... well then he may well have participated in a crime (conspiracy; accessory; theft of data; unauthorized access) at a US military installation. Why would we want to support this?

Investigative journalism is worthy of our protection. We need to ask and obtain answers to difficult questions. The "press" (at least in the US) really does have the right to ask the questions and to publish the answers. Determining what to ask, who to ask, and what to publish is the critical role of the 'investigative journalist'. So long as the journalist is simply asking questions and getting answers, they deserve our protection.

If the "journalist" stops asking questions and starts directing... [for lack of a better term, literally] agents to steal that data, we DO need to reassess their role. I'm not sure if JA crossed that line, but it seems reasonable that we should ask. Who watches the watchers, etc...

Speaking from direct experience, it makes little difference. In every district I've worked at, transfers beyond a certain amount have to be approved by the school board/committee. A large city supt may be able to move $100k without approval, a small district fiscally challenged supt may only be able to move $2500. Bear in mind that's $2500 _at_a_time_. Transfers beyond the threshold will absolutely have been approved by the 'board or committee.

Allowing transfers is fundamentally ethical. The district budget is not a suicide pact.

If the Supt or ASupt or Business director say that the transfer is in the best interest of the students (even if you and I think otherwise). "The Rules" don't require that IT staff (or custodians, or misc. teachers, or school nurses) be consulted before a budget is modified. These transfers are generally approved without much debate. Good 'boards (and bad ones) trust their administrators to manage their schools and school budgets within reason. It really is for the children...

Spending the discretionary budget ASAP is the single best defense against this ... negligence. The pet projects will happen. Let them happen to someone else. Run out of money fast.

The next best defense is to go to the board meetings (all of them). Being there makes you a player. It puts you at (or near) the table when a 'board member asks innocently "well are we sure this is the best place to take that money from?"

Fiscal Policy is a red herring. Your Superintendent controls your budget and has the power to set and change priorities. No doubt he/she follows the letter of the rules. There is nothing to blow the whistle on unless you can represent criminal activities BEYOND mere negligence.

You must USE the system. You must must PLAY the politics.

In most K-12 districts, the fiscal year begins; your budget for the year becomes active; on July 1. 90-95% of your budget MUST BE encumbered (POs written against it) by July 15. All planned hardware and supply purchases are ordered and probably in transit by July 30. This is self defense.

Some POs are for bills that may not come due until December or later... but these are not items that can easily be cancelled. Adobe & MS School agreements like to renew in January... pity the MEd who cancels Windows and Office for any pet project...

So yes, they can grab up the 5-10%. That's basically contingency anyway. USE the system. When a critical system breaks in April and you don't have the parts on hand you will be the one grabbing the leftovers in other accounts to get it fixed. Trust me, if the server that hosts payroll needs a HDD, it will arrive tomorrow and nevermind the budget.

USE the system. In April, your Superintendent is looking for projects to spend any leftover dollars on. Yes, s/he's going to use them to go to a conference in Hawaii... but if there is anything left, you might have a shot at it. You need your proposal - 3 quotes; i's with dots, t's with crosses - ready to go immediately. Hypothetical doesn't sell when the money has to be spent now.

PLAY the politics. Find a convention in Hawaii that you and your Superintendent(s) can go to. People that do that are called TEAM PLAYERS. Be one.

Wrong. I work in a district much like GP. What you describe is probably how the last guy got this one into this mess.

a) "Open Source" is not a magic fix-it. If OP/GP is a windows/PC tech, he has a sharp learning curve ahead and he already has no time. If he makes a switch and can't make it work, he's on the street. Even if he can make it work, training the users will be nearly impossible. Sure, a browser is a browser, but K-12 is a strange industry where uncooperative employees tend to survive to weigh down the process for years. "You can't expect me to use this thing without training!" "You can't expect me to show up to training seminars without extra pay!" "I can't do my job because you gave me a computer that I can't use!" "Test scores are down because I spent all my time trying to use your system!"

b) $1500? This guy is bidding against the donated 5yr old crap and "Black Friday" new pricing. They're going around him because he (or the last guy) was taking your advice. YES, $1500 is a good budget number for a midrange computer and monitor, standard MS software, and related infrastructure. He won't get that. You can play that game in your research environment only because everyone does....

c) The reason you need MS Office is not for the Principals... The teachers will want an office suite on their computers that matches the instructional materials they can buy to aid their instruction. Yes, they should teach it differently, but they don't and this guy is a decade away from having the street cred to tell them how and still keep his job.

d) Your best advice. If he can get them to come to him, get at least two vendors to fight for the business. Don't go the sealed bid route. Tell each about the other bid. Rinse and repeat.

e) He has no budget. If he has a discretionary budget, infrastructure is the way to be. No you don't need cisco- I am personally a fan of HP switches...

My advice: Setup a meeting with the Superintendent(s) and the business administrator. Share your reasonably priced vision of what their district could be in 3-4 years with consistent, managed investment. (Include their pet projects - grit your teeth and do it!) Tell them what it costs both in terms of dollars and procedural changes. Do this every 6 months or so regardless of the result.

Regardless of the result:
1: Core infrastructure first. Those switches. 2 Servers. Good backup for critical data (business office; stuff used by superintendents).

1a: Business critical systems must be setup and managed correctly. This is the ONLY item I would take to the school board if you can't get cooperation. This means domain, authentication, good enterprise class AV, VPN access for semitrusted systems that need access. You should insist on this in the strongest way possible.

2: Inventory and Ticket system. Knowing how many of what you are responsible for is important. Knowing how many times you've had to fix the lab of black Friday rejects is critical too.

3: People that work through you take priority. If they did it your way and bought what you wanted the way you wanted, it MUST work. MUST! If you have to sit there a switch the bits yourself...

4: That means you get to those home OS mistakes when you can. NEVER order parts for these machines. NEVER spend a lot of time servicing these machines. DO NOT be afraid to declare these systems "no longer usable without significant repair investment". When asked about that cost, quote the dollar amount of a properly spec'd new machine.

5: DO NOT leave non-functional machines deployed. Non-functional equipment makes you look bad. Insufficient quantities of equipment may lead to proper budgeting...

Finally: If you find yourself with a small budget for user endpoints (computers) and want to deploy to gain the most budgetary 'bang for your buck', consider deploying in the K-4 / K-6 segment of your district. Most districts put their best in the 9-12 space and place progressively older / less reliable systems in spaces for lower grades. (The exception to this is sometimes Sp.Ed. as they may have their own budgets for this hardware). If your primary grades' systems are reliable and effective; if the word gets out; your older segments will demand similar treatment.

Good luck!

To make it work over interplanetary distances, you'd have to let the drones decide the targets. What could possibly go wrong with that?