Moonshine?

The bigger problem is that debate anymore devolves immediately to "choice" between false dichotomies, vacuous positions screamed between raving caricatures on the left to insane caricatures on the right.

By the way, what does "GP" mean?

I apologize for having carelessly left an impression that I disagreed. I actually identified with your points, and I was going off on a tangental rant. This being /., I'm so used to reading America haters on both sides of the Atlantic painting uninformed pictures of violent crime ridden America; and for the same reasons, the distortions inherent of ubiquitous press and entertainment media only capable of creating highly cartoonish caricatures of reality. The serious shame is what it's doing to our children, and thus future generations. When I was a kid, we could leave the house in the summer every morning, and not return until dinner, or even by dark, unless we got hungry and diverted home, or to a friend's home, for chow, sometime noonish. Now kids are prisoners of "play-dates" and hovering parents who are scared shitless by the sick perception that if they divert theirs eyes for a second, Johnny's going to be butt raped and murdered, no question. Why? Because in the statistically few tragic occasions when something, anything, sensational does happen anywhere in any small corner of the country or the world, it's splashed all over CNN, MSNBC or Fox every 15 minutes all day. Did shit happen in the 50's and 60's when I was growing up? Sure. But when it happened in Tallahassee, we didn't get to hear about it all day long in San Diego on 24 hour news networks for 5 freaking days running, with constant streams of "experts" reminding us constantly how we need to imprison our little darlings for their own protection. Life will suck for our grandkids.

Not that I can tell after only 2 days. Are you a troll?

I'd just recommend that when you compare, it's done intelligently and fairly. I mean, there's a huge difference between the insanely distorted America depicted in clever headlines and media soundbites and the many and varied communities across the United States. The US is not CNN, it is not the E Channel, it is not Hollywood. Really. I've lived and traveled extensively in Europe and Asia across the decades. I've found there to be at least as much variation in good and bad neighborhoods, rich and poor, genteel and tough, both Europe and Asia. There are streets, stradas, rues, calles, etc., on either continent that I avoid at night or alone.

In the Democratic Peoples Republic of Maryland (DPRM) one has the duty to refrain inciting the proletariat with bourgeous state disapproved expressions.

Online deliver is but one method that nearly every University offers for some number of its classes, and that number and ratio varies by program. Some classes are full classroom delivery, some are full lecture delivery, some are hybrid. I believe that's OK. The future is in whatever combination proves most effective and economical as demonstrated by some metrics that include testing and quality of subsequent work. It is best to avoid extreme positions of all or nothing.

Thing is, the NSA and the DEA both do a lot of legitimately essential work across a number of important areas. Notwithstanding any argument whether in DEA's case there might be redundancy as one of many special focus law enforcement agencies, NSA performs some unique missions nobody else does, like crypto production, for example, or performs to the same level, like coordinating foreign focused Signals Intelligence among and serving the Military branches. Also, NSA itself is so stove-piped that even if one area really was "out of control" as alleged, other parts are regular, boring, but arguably essential grunt-work for no-kidding recognizable National Security functions. The key is that regulation and oversight, which is what legitimate bureaucracy is all about, has to be consistently enforced. Bureaucratic baboonery, though ordinary and pervasive, should be astutely and vigilantly guarded against. Like entropy, systems of people will always trend towards out-of-control conditions unless well managed.

Key questions include: a. what budget line item did the $900K come from?; b. what did the funding justification documentation look like?; and, c. at what level was this approved, and by whom? If DEA has so much money laying about that they can toss it around without adult supervision, then I suggest that there may be some oversight committees who might want to have some hearings.

...and hey, I thought that with "settled science" one is never allowed to question, or even more egregious, test, a theory, right?

You are beneath contempt, and it would be otherwise intuitive that you should be ignored as an aberration. However, it is extremely important that decent people of good will realize that their opposites, people like you, are not an aberration, that you exist in the environment as a pervasive and pernicious evil, and therefore appropriate countermeasures must be put in place and vigilance maintained.

I'll bet most people today are interpreting this as simply connecting computer peripherals. The last time I assembled a computer was when I bought a chassis, mother board, RAM, Power Supply, drives, etc., separately, in parts, and assembled then configured it. I don't think this is very common anymore. Used to be.

..here's a bunny... Your message is weak and garbled unless it's really only to express gratuitous rage against the U. S. intelligence community, in which case, OK, at least that part is loud and clear. If, however, your point is to discourage participation of an informed and interested party in a useful forum that, independently, addresses a valid global concern, cyber security, then your message is both muddy and unsupported.

The confusing part of the conversation, I think, is the straw man idea of "releasing" the source code in order for it to be determined secure. What does "release" in that context even mean? If security is in question (which I assume to mean the constituent attributes of Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability), which security should always be for such a system, then one could use a trusted broker to examine and report on inspection and test of the architecture and code without "releasing" the code so that anyone could examine it, presumably to facilitate vulnerability discovery.