About 10yrs ago I decided to do some volunteer work. By the time I was done, I decided not to volunteer anymore. It's just too depressing that most, if not all, of the charities are run so poorly. But the red cross was one of the worst. I told them I was a programmer and a DBA so they made me the "host" meaning I handed out cookies and made people frozen pizzas while they donated blood. For this I had to go through a background check, speak with a councilor. They told me that if I couldn't pass the background check, that was ok, I could drive the trucks if I had a record. You know, the trucks with the blood in them. Really.

Then they needed help with this Access database, I was a DBA right? No, get back to the cookies! they say. They hired this consulting firm to help them with Access, who charged them $20k and sent it a kid strait out of community college.

They'd run adds on TV "We're running low on blood! We desperately need you to donate this weekend!" but that came out of marketing, who didn't tell the doctors or nurses, so they'd get slammed when they weren't staffed to handle it.

The red cross is completely mismanaged, disorganized, and clueless. But then again, so was every other charity I found so...

Elitist and racist comments that trigger the like reflexes pretty much everyone on slashdot right?
Buy American! Be American! lol

I see "Entry level" programers float in from the local community college every other day. They usually can't figure out how to use our vending machine, much less write a line of code. The people from India/Pakistan show up and just get shit done. They also bring awesome stuff to our pot lucks.

The problem isn't H1B visas. The problem is the rub stamp educational standards colleges have in this country and completely destroyed employers faith in what a US degree means.

So, I think that the word we need to get out to the uninformed public is that hackers do not have magic powers that are impossible to defend against. Governments and Corporations responsible for these breaches keep trying to portray the hackers as if they were mad-men flying planes into buildings. How can you stop a fully loaded 747 flying at 800mph right?!?!

But that's not the case. Every single one of these breaches has been the result of mistakes made my the organization that was attacked as trivial as leaving keys in the lock of your safe with a big sign that says "Money inside!" These agencies and companies could easily, and with little monetary investment, make breaches like this nearly impossible.

In most cases the mistakes aren't even technological, they're institutional. Usually those attacked had well qualified security folks on staff who were doing their best to prevent the attack. But when the "VP of operations" (or whatever) comes in and says "The project is late, everyone's telling me it's because you're department is insisting on two factor authentication. I'm going to sign off on that and we're going to move forward" there's not much they can do.

Look at the Sony attack. You had executives of the company sitting there with the entire companies financial records down to the penny sitting on their windows desktop... WHILE their security department was telling them the entire network had an active virus infection running rampant. Basically nothing happened to any of the people responsible.

First: What the fuck is a "Technologist?" Personally, I reffer to myself as a Pornomancer, but what that means outside of my secret closet in the basement, I'm not sure.
Secondly: Since when did having a 4 line wikipedia entry mean you were a notable person? This guy has a bigger article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

Personally, I don't understand why people have browser history turned on at all. I build a lot of computers for people (by happenstance it's a hobby) I build a dozen or so per year. The FIRST thing I do after the first boot is install Firefox (my preference), permanently turn off browsing history, install AdBlock+, install HTTPS Anywhere, then launch Windows update and go watch a movie.

I've never seen history help anyone. But I've seen it cause all sorts of embarrassing accidents, fights with spouses, legal trouble, etc... Is there actually a use for it?

So is this the "Change we can believe in"?

And no, I'm not making fun on democrats. I'm making fun of anyone that thinks their party cares about them or their country at all.

Basically the definition of every word in your statement is ambiguous so I find that hard to answer.
What is a "Friend"
What do you mean by "Point"
and "Social media"?!?! Does anyone know what that means?

It's on the internet, there's text, he clicks buttons, it makes him smile. More power to him.

wtf are you talking about? Name any other backup scheme that wouldn't suffer the exact same potential disaster? Even if you set it up yourself in your own house on your own network that could happen. The difference is Googles far less likely to have that sort of problem than the NAS you bought off Newegg did.

If you REALLY wanted to protect your data, you'd back it up to both your house and google.

But it IS reliable and private. It's only NOT private when you take the "Free" options. I've been using Google Photos for backing up my entire families photos (80gig and climbing) for years. It costs me a $1 and is as complicated as checking a box on each of our phones.

If you want something else... ok write it and stop bitching.

I doubt that. I think the US often overestimates themselves. Pretty much every war we've fought since WW2 has been against 3rd world countries with a few key assets provided by China/Russia. A war against China or Russia proper I suspect would be an eye opener for a lot of people. Aircraft Carriers are really big targets and Stealth aircraft are only really stealthy to pre-1980s anti-air systems.

It's simple, if you want the anti-aging you have to get snipped. As of whenever they create these laws, anyone alive is allowed 1 or 2 children before they get the anti-aging. If you have 3 more more (After the law is passed, so as not to exclude those that had them before such a thing existed) then you're out.

You trade immortality for your reproductive rights. It's as simple as that.

You have a typically myopic American conservative point of view. You're picking and choosing your numbers to fit your point of view. WWII killed 60 million people? Really? So you're including the holocaust? and the flu?

And using WW2 as the "bar" for what war is like is kind of a joke. WW2 was a unique event in human history. It had never happened before and claiming that anything has prevented it from happening again is kind of a joke. It very well could happen again but now we have nukes! Yay! Do you think Germany would have had any concerns about the cost of nuclear war in the 1940s? lol

Your argument only works if all countries have free and fair democratic elections. They don't. I'd even argue that WE don't have them. When you have countries like North Korea, Russia, China, Iran with nukes? It only take a couple of dozen people to decide the cost of the war is worth it and we're all done for.

I'll never understand how groups (Especially NASA) can spend millions, or even BILLIONS on projects like these and not even complete the sorts of rudimentary testing that those of us in the professional software fields have to do every day. Ok, this computers going into space and going to run for days/months/years... whatever... so hey, maybe we should boot it up while it's still on the ground and see if it'll run for a couple of months without crashing first?

One of the mars rover had the same problem. It worked fine, but after a week or two it died because of a flash bug... they'd never tested it on earth for a week strait prior to launching a billion dollar piece of hardware?!?! What's wrong with these people? This is rudimentary stuff. You test it prior to launch for a long period of time. Then box it up and don't touch it. If you make any changes, re-test.

No major wars in the past 70 years? Wtf have you been smoking? We've been in a proxy war with Russia since basically the end of WWII. We've invaded practically every country in the middle east, South America and most of Asia. Millions of people are dead. Basically the entire middle east is at war with us in one way or another as we speak. The only difference between now and WWII is the iron grip our leaders now have on the message our media feeds us. We are in the middle of a world war right now, and have been this entire time.

After memorial day I read an article about how Obama was celebrating the first memorial day without "boots on the ground" in 7 years or something. Meanwhile we've got special forces in every country in the middle east, bombers flying daily missions, drones bombing weddings. Just how gullible are we?!?!

I spun it around twice... meh?
My realtor has a camera that can pretty much do that... It's cooler looking than my kitchen but still, seems like a lot of effort.